Sub Rosa: Metallica Saga
by kayura sanada
Summary: 5th. Duo's relationship with Heero has hit rock bottom. Is there any way for it to be saved? And will a new yet familiar danger help them fix their problems... or tear them apart forever? 1x2, 3x4. Sequel up!
1. And Justice For All

Disclaimer: Gundam Wing, shockingly, horrifyingly, belongs to someone else.

* * *

Sub Rosa

Chapter One

...And Justice For All

* * *

Heero had only returned home a few days ago, but he'd plunged straight into work.

He'd said it was because he had to help clean up the mess with Caribol, but I think it was to escape the awkward silences in the house.

Oh, we'd talked about our... problems from the previous, uh, mission. But that didn't automatically solve them. Imagine your – boyfriend? Imagine your boyfriend freaking out if he sees you drinking something he didn't get for you. Then imagine yourself freaking out every time your boyfriend left for work or clutched his stomach.

Kind of problematic, huh?

Yeah. Just a little.

We'd been walking on eggshells around each other ever since Heero returned from the hospital. Our routine had gotten thrown into an immediate standstill. Heero and I just wouldn't talk to each other. But there were times... there were times when I thought he'd turned to me to try to say something. He just... never actually opened his fucking mouth.

It was driving me insane.

I had absolutely nothing to do, of course. Une wasn't giving me work, and I couldn't go shooting off into space, seeing as Heero would probably freak. But I was slowly going insane from boredom, so much so that I'd gotten into an interesting habit of writing random poems on scraps of paper. I'd kept them carefully hidden after writing them, of course. Thank you very much.

Agh. My life was at a very boring standstill.

I hated standstills.

"Come _ooonn_," I groaned, flopping around on the bed. I'd already done my exercises and fixed up an old poem of mine. I was officially out of interesting things to do. "I am _soooo_ bored!"

I almost whooped when the doorbell rang.

Racing down the stairs was probably a stupid thing to do, but I made it safely to the bottom so I didn't care. I did whoop when I looked out the peephole.

"Quatre!" I grinned madly at the blond, then sent a careful smile over to Trowa, who stood behind Quatre bodyguard-style. "Trowa. Hi. What're you guys doing here?"

Quatre blushed and looked down at his feet.

I blinked. "Uh...?" I turned to Trowa. "Are you going to enlighten me?"

Trowa sighed, scratched his head, and pushed open the door. Only when he'd gently pushed Quatre inside did he come in and close the door, effectively making our conversation private. I turned to him with an eyebrow raised.

"Well?" I pressed.

But Trowa just placed a hand on Quatre's shoulder. "Just say it," he advised.

Quatre cleared his throat. "Uh, Duo, I have some news for you."

I have no idea where I found the patience not to shake Quatre into just coughing it up. "And?"

"Well..." He hesitated. "Technically, I'm not supposed to be telling you this, okay?"

"Um, okay...?"

Quatre stepped forward and glanced furtively around. "Heero's at work, right?"

Oh, now if that didn't get me a little concerned, nothing would. "Uh, yeah."

"Well, then Une wants to talk to you."

"And this would make you blush because...?"

Quatre cleared his throat. "And I wanted to ask you something," he finished lamely.

"And that would be...?"

But Quatre seemed about done now; he just shrugged and looked vaguely at the walls. It was Trowa who finally just muttered something under his breath and told me. "He wants to publish a book of your poetry."

"What?!" I yelped, so disturbed I actually jumped back a little bit. Quatre was carefully studying the dragon statuette Wufei had given Heero; the thing had miraculously survived wholly intact. Apparently he already knew my answer. "Uh, sorry, Quatre, but my answer is 'no way in hell'."

Quatre sighed, finally turning back to look me in the eye. "I sort of figured." But then he brightened. "But you aren't angry?"

"No," I said carefully, "just a bit confused."

Quatre seemed about ready to belabor his point, but unbelievably, Trowa was the one to grab his shoulder and shake his head, thus ending Quatre's monologue before it began.

"Uh, so does either of you know what the commander wants?"

I think my jaw dropped when Trowa, of all people, answered me. "All we know is that it's about Caribol."

I let out an exaggerated sigh and gestured them further inside, ushering Quatre into a chair while I took the sofa. Trowa chose to continue standing, but at least now he was leaning against the wall. "I thought Preventors was taking care of that?"

Trowa and Quatre both just shrugged. "We don't know; we were just told to come 'fetch' you," Quatre told me. "We thought you might have an idea."

"None. Heero isn't talking." I bit my lip then. Heero and I weren't talking to each other about much of anything these days.

Quatre seemed to catch my mood. "Duo... how are things...? Between you two?"

I found myself staring at the carpet before I could consciously tell myself not to. "Well, I guess you can imagine." I felt my face flush. "Think about it. After everything that's happened, it's going to... to be a while... before we can get back on track."

Trowa snorted. "You were on track before?"

"_Trowa_!" Quatre reprimanded, but Trowa's words made me smile.

"No... maybe not. But we were at least... I dunno, on the right train? Now it's like we were trying to get to the train station and both ended up at different airports."

"Really good metaphor there. I can see why you're a poet."

I could've punched him. "But you understood it, didn't you?" It was a sarcastic question; it would e pretty hard not to have.

"But Duo, is it really that bad?" Quatre asked, all concerned and worried. He leaned forward in his seat. "Heero hasn't been mean, has he?"

Mean. Trust Quatre. "No, nothing like that. It's more like... well, look at the two of you." I gestured to them, making Quatre blink rather confusedly. "Trowa's behind you, leaning toward you, and you're leaning back, toward him. Heero and I... we kind of walk _around_ each other, you know?" I twisted my first finger in circles. "Like there are bubbles around us we can't let pop."

Quatre frowned at me. "Maybe that's really what it is?"

My hand dropped. "Huh?"

Trowa sighed long-sufferingly.

"I mean," Quatre said, "the two sound like you're being careful around each other because of what happened... before. Right?"

I nodded slowly. "Uh, yeah?" What did that have to do with bubbles?

"Well, don't you think that might be because you're afraid of being hurt again?"

It was like listening to the gears click into place and watching some ancient enchanted door creak open. "_Oh_!" It made me stand, like a spring had been hit. "Oh – _shit!_"

Maybe Heero and I had an even bigger problem than I'd imagined.

Trowa laughed at me. "You need to do something about it," he told me then, serious as a ghost. "At this rate, things will fall apart."

I flinched. Well, no shit, Sherlock. I'd known that before I'd known the reason for all this. I turned back to Quatre. "But do you think that's the reason Heero's been avoiding me?"

"Maybe," Quatre hedged. "It's hard to tell – Heero's really guarding his emotions right now."

Which sounded to me like he was definitely feeling emotionally brittle. "All right. Great." I sat back down, only to stand again. "I'm sorry to throw you guys out, but I guess I should go see what Her Highness wants."

"Ah, Commander Une?" Quatre stood then as well. "That might be best. She seemed a bit upset when she was talking to us."

"What she sounded like was pissed." Trowa pushed himself off of the wall to stand beside Quatre. There is was again; they were unconsciously leaning toward each other. And when Trowa looked down at Quatre, that small, almost indecipherable smile crossed his lips. Quatre just freaking beamed at him – thank goodness, I thought, that whatever problems the two had seemed to be having were working themselves out. "Duo."

I jumped a bit, blushed. Why did it feel like I just got caught peeping into the girl's locker room? "Y-Yeah?"

"Did you do something to piss the woman off?"

I immediately opened my mouth to argue, but really, maybe I had. I'd kind of moved on my own initiative and killed the leader of Caribol, thus effectively losing his testimony. "Uh... maybe?"

Trowa snorted. "Then we'll go so you can get your ass reamed. Come on, Quatre."

Trowa put an arm over Quatre's shoulders and began steering him out. "Ah – but... maybe we should go with him, Trowa. If she's going to..."

But I just laughed and opened the door for them. "I think I can handle the crazy lady, Qat. I've been doing it for years, remember? Thanks for coming and telling me. Take care, okay?"

"Yeah, okay – but-"

And I very gently shut the door on his face.

And sighed.

Shit. When I'd been complaining about boredom, I didn't really want it to be broken by the psycho hag's ass-chewing. Good for breaking monotony it may be, but I didn't think my ass would appreciate it much.

"Fine, fine," I grumbled carefully stretching my arms out. I would be okay getting there, at least. And if I fell in a heap of pain and suffering, well, that would be all her fault.

* * *

"Strike."

It was as soon as I entered her office; I hadn't even gotten the chance to crack a joke at her yet. Apparently this shit was serious.

She was half-glaring at me as I took my seat, her hands folded neatly in front of her. She looked like a principal about to reprimand a wayward student. Or at least I guessed this was what angry principals looked like.

"Make yourself comfortable," she warned, then slid a thick manila envelope my way. "And read that."

That was it; the lady was fucking scary. "Nice to see you too, mon capitan," I piped, slipping the folder closer and flipping it open. "Glad to see you all bright and shiny and bubbly, as usual."

"Glad to see you walking," the woman retorted blandly, not even bothering to look at me as she bent down to some documents laying out on her desk.

I had to give her that little tally mark. Woman was freaking terrifying.

The papers inside were mostly familiar. Here be Caribol Fuckface One, there be Caribol Fuckface Two. I couldn't help scowling at the pictures of the bastards anymore than I could help the fury building deep inside me. There were reports on interrogations, interviews (from the surviving cyborgs) and other miscellaneous bullshit, including stuff on the casino. Finally I dropped the folder back on her desk. "So?" I asked, leaning back and crossing my arms.

"So. Did you notice the anomalies?" She leaned forward.

I scowled and thought back. "Ah – Fuckface Two's name and profile was in there before the last reports were in, even though it said there were no records of the guy to be found. Is that what you mean?"

The woman gave a loud sigh. "You mean _Frederick Trudgill_, right?"

"Sure. The Fuckface I shot when he picked up his gun." After telling the stupid fucker to pick up his gun, I should say. And his stupidly doing it. Dumb fuck.

"So how do you think we got this information?" she asked, even though anyone could have followed the thread – or at least anyone who'd been trained to almost-death by this old fart and his younger cronies.

"We'd received the information through a second contact," I answered, and my mind whirled. "But the only 'second contact' we had was... Heero." I snapped up in the chair. "Are you shitting me? He tried to contact us?"

"Strike – Maxwell. Is that language necessary?"

But I couldn't have cared less if the building were tilting like the fucking leaning tower. "So did he?"

"That's what it seems like."

I huffed and slumped back, my mind racing. "So if he tried to contact us and someone kept it quiet-"

"We have ourselves a mole."

I tried to think about all of the suffering we all went through thinking Heero was dead. Then I tried to think about Heero, out there on his own thinking we'd have his back when in reality he was being fucking from the inside. I tried to think what the guy looked like so I could pound his face into a meat grinder.

Then I stopped myself. "But wouldn't Heero have mentioned it?" It was highly unlikely, after all, that Heero would just let something like that slide when he returned.

"You'd think."

I sighed. Sometimes the woman was just freaking annoying – but she could get away with it. Because she was terrifying. "In other words, you want me to find out."

"Exactly."

Well, I was certainly curious enough. I rolled my shoulders and stood. "Fine. And I suppose I'm expected to keep this a secret from Heero?"

"Turn around's fair play," she noted.

"Right." I chuckled darkly. "Well, it's not like we're on that great of speaking terms right now," I mumbled, half to myself. I definitely wanted to know why this information hadn't been sent out. Or why Heero had failed to mention it yet. Heero wasn't the type to let something like this slide; there was a fucking mole in our midsts, after all. And Heero was certainly a stickler for loyalty.

"Is that something you want to go into more detail about?"

I gave her a dirty look. "No."

"Just thought I'd ask." She shrugged and stood, as well. "In any case, I want you to get started on this first thing. Your wounds have pretty much healed, correct?"

"Yeah, that's right." I could even go a whole day without feeling any pain sometimes.

"Good. Then get started."

"Yes, O Mighty One." I bowed to her and made my escape, the woman's half-glare at my back the whole way.

* * *

Of course I went on-line first. I went straight back to Heero's place and hooked myself through the Preventors' databases and checked through records. Of course there was nothing, at least not on the surface. Heero would have been extra-cautious.

I sighed after about two hours and rolled my neck around, working out the kinks. Heero would be back soon; I had to erase everything and close down. The real search would begin tomorrow.

But why? Why would Heero try to get in touch with everyone? Hell, he'd said that he specifically hadn't tried to get in touch with us because he was suspicious of my acting skills. It had been what had gotten everything... what had led me to...

I shook my head violently. No. Couldn't let those images suck me in again. They were clear enough each night.

I shut down my computer, stood and stretched. I'd begun studying how to cook, and so far I'd managed to make fairly decent meals, all of which were carefully balanced for Heero's health – though I'd assured him I'd been doing this since I left the hospital in order to gain my own health back. It was just easier to let him think that.

The truth was that I was just plain afraid to let anything enter Heero's mouth that I wasn't aware of. As long as I knew what he was eating, I could be fairly certain that he was clutching his stomach due to pain from his wound and not from poison. Although I'd warned him that my food may end up being about as edible as said poison...

I sighed. Heero and I weren't... why were we even living together? We said we'd try to get through this together, that as long as we were alive we could move through this. But we weren't going anywhere.

I heard the door downstairs open and cursed. I'd been so busy freaking out I hadn't gotten my ass downstairs to start dinner. I hurried to the stairs to rectify that mistake.

Heero was standing just in front of the door as I started down, a stricken look on his face. His Preventors files were scattered all over the floor.

"Heero?" I called, quickly coming down the stairs. "Heero?"

He turned to me like a gunshot. "Duo," he breathed, and then he was on me, pulling me toward him, door wide open and files still laying forlornly on the carpet. His arms were around me before I quite knew he was intending anything at all.

And then he pulled my head to the crook of his neck and I got to listen to his heartbeat hammering away, his fear beating a fierce tattoo into my eardrum.

He'd been scared.

And I realized that this was the first day since he returned to work that I hadn't been in the kitchen cooking something when he returned.

"Sorry," I whispered, and his arms just tightened around me. I felt pain bloom up my back, but I shrugged it aside. "I didn't do anything – I was spacing out and lost track of time, that's all. Quatre came over," I told him, thinking up an excuse as quickly as possible. "He said he wanted to get my poems published – it just freaked me out a little bit."

Heero's chuckle was a little wired.

We just stood there for a few minutes, him holding me and getting his shit together, me hating myself for having attempted suicide and thus making Heero constantly worry about me. I didn't like seeing him like this. It made me feel helpless.

"I'll get dinner ready now," I told him. Then, knowing he wouldn't be able to leave my side, I asked him, "do you want to help?"

"Yes." He seemed to jump on the opportunity to keep me in his sight. "I'll help."

"Great. Then _you_ can take the fat off the chicken. That shit is _nasty_."

Heero chuckled again, and this time he seemed a bit more in control. "I'm sorry for that." He slipped his arms from my back and stood away from me, looking a little sham-faced.

"It's fine," I assured him, and proceeded into the kitchen before he could see the self-hatred in my eyes. It would only worry him more – an emotion he equated with suicidal thoughts.

At this point, could we really manage to make it through this?


	2. The Memory Remains

Disclaimer: Gundam Wing, shockingly, horrifyingly, belongs to someone else.

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Sub Rosa

Chapter Two

The Memory Remains

* * *

We ate dinner in silence.

It was the usual awkward affair – pass the salt, please, pass the gravy, the food is good – and all the while you're mentally screaming _please God get me the hell out of here_. That sort of thing.

Personally, other than the mental screaming, I was studying Heero's profile. I let all thoughts slip my mind and just _looked_. Hey, I am a man, okay? Heero's entire body was one to make anyone interested in men have a permanent fucking hard-on. But for me it was more than that. Seeing him made me feel calm. Safe. It was strange. These days, having known the despair of his death – something I'd felt once before during the war – I couldn't help but notice these things – how his hair fell in a curve into his right eye, how his fingers curled around the fork, even how his eyelids lowered just slightly when he looked down at his plate. All I could do was watch.

It hurt, how much I loved him.

He rarely looked up at me, probably due to his loss of control earlier, but nevertheless it was... daunting. We seemed so far apart. More than just the table separated us. It was like... like we'd placed barriers around ourselves and didn't know how to take them down.

I poked my food and stared at it morosely. It was habit that had me eating more that anything. Waste not, want not and all that. I chewed and thought and finally, when Heero was about to excuse himself, I spoke.

"Maybe... we should talk."

My words were hardly more than a whisper, but Heero froze from getting out of his seat and just stared at me kind of wide-eyed. Scared?

"About what?" he asked me, and his voice seemed to waver.

"Heero." I put my fork down and leaned forward, but I couldn't stand looking into his eyes and dropped my gaze to my plate. "We... can't continue like this."

His breath hissed in sharply.

"We aren't getting anywhere; we're walking on tip-toes around each other... it's like we're enemies instead of..." But what could I call us? Boyfriends? Partners? We certainly weren't lovers.

"Duo. Are you... do you... want to leave?"

I jerked back, stunned. His face was twisted with emotion. "No – no! That's not what I meant!"

He closed his eyes and seemed to gather himself. I saw his hands tremble as they placed his plate carefully back on the table. He sat it down a bit too carefully. "Then...?"

"We can't keep this up, Heero. I... I want to be able to talk to you."

Heero raked a hand through his hair. "I... understand. But... whenever I look at you, I wonder..."

I laughed a bit bitterly. "And I always look at you and fear what I've done. What I almost did."

"Duo, that's-"

"I won't do it again, Heero; I'll never hurt you again," I said strongly, cutting off whatever platitude he was about to give me. "That's on me, what I did. And I know it's hard to believe this after what I tried to do, but I swear I'm not going to try again. There's no way to fix everything I've done, all the mistakes I've made. But at least... at least for that _one_ mistake, you can know that I'm saying the truth." My hands fisted on top of the table.

Heero cursed under his breath. "This shouldn't be done here. Let's go to the living room."

I let Heero lead me out of the kitchen, even allowed him to place me on one side of the sofa while he took the other. I looked up only then, knowing that Heero's eyes would pierce me in place, knowing that I wouldn't be able to speak in time to stop him from trying to placate me once more.

"I love you."

I jerked back a bit, shocked by the sudden fierceness in his voice. I tried to speak, but he cut off me off before I could even start.

"I love you," he repeated. "More than anything. I've never really... I've never had the chance to love someone, so I never know if I'm doing it right. I can only do the best I can. It makes me falter sometimes, knowing that I want to keep you here, yet wanting you to have your freedom. It made me hesitate to say this. Duo." And Heero grabbed my hand, pulled it forward. "I would die if I lost you."

I flinched.

"No, hear me out. I can't lose you. I suppose that helps me understand... what you were thinking. If I had been in your place..." He took a deep breath. "I can't even imagine. My mind stops right in the middle of the scenario. I... can't bear to think about it."

I just kept bending into myself; while he couldn't bear to think about it, I couldn't take the image out of my mind.

"In that sense, I can understand. But in my fear, I lost sight of that. All I could think about was that I had almost lost you. And even now, thinking about it... no one will tell me anything about it – about what you did, or how close it was." He took a deep breath, his hands shaking against mine. "All I know was that you ended up hospitalized."

If he was digging, he wasn't being too subtle about it. "As I said," I mumbled, glaring holes in our couch, "I used strychnine."

"A slow killer."

I hunched into myself just that little bit further. "...Yeah."

"Why?"

"Heero, what exactly does this have to do with-"

"I need to know."

That got me. I looked up and cocked an eyebrow. "Need to?"

His eyes never wavered. "Yes."

Shit. Soldier mode, huh? I caved and saved myself the time and energy. "I used strychnine because it would cause me the most pain."

Heero's hands clenched so tightly I winced. "Specifically _because_ of it?"

I nodded rather despondently. "Yeah."

"_Why?"_

His voice was so anguished it hurt my chest to hear it. When I finally managed to answer, it was in a whisper. "Because I knew I would have to kill you."

We sat there for a while, each thinking our own thoughts. My mind whirled. Would he hate me? Get pissed? Jump up and leave the room? Then, of course, a part of my mind was wondering if it was really okay to have told you, and whether I should let this conversation get swept away by Heero again, just like they always seemed to. And if it wasn't being swept away, then what the hell was he asking me this shit for?

Then I got this picture of Une in my mind an remembered that Heero had sent word of his going undercover to someone in the department and wondered if he would bring up that particular topic while we were talking.

"So you had planned it?"

I scowled. "Of course."

There was another interesting little pause before Heero found his voice again. "And how close was it?"

I shrugged and switched my gaze to the back of the couch, more for a change of scenery than for any other reason. "I hadn't really figured I could be saved at that point. The doctor said that I should have died – my organs should have failed and whatnot. But I guess training made it harder for me to croak, even though I'd taken more than the necessary dose."

I hardly finished before Heero pulled my wrist forward until I was trapped within his arms. "See?" His breath whispered against my ear. "I can't take it. I can't. If I'd found you like that... or worse... I can't..."

Shit, he was crying again. "Oi, oi," I murmured, awkwardly freeing my arms so I could hold him, too. "You aren't fully healed yet."

"I'm healed enough. I made sure I was healthy enough before I came back. Just in case."

"Bastard," I muttered. And to think I'd thought the man had been avoiding me. It didn't take a genius to figure out that the 'just in case' applied to _me_. In case I couldn't take care of myself. Two injured people in the same house usually had a tough time of it, right? Bastard.

His arms tightened around me. "Duo. Duo. I want to say I'll be all right, that it doesn't hurt me too much. And even though you say you won't try again, and despite the fact that I believe you, I still can't shake the fear."

I took a careful breath, mindful both of his wound and my still-healing muscles. "And I can't stop seeing... that time."

Heero flinched at that, but there was nothing for it and we ended up just sitting there for a long time.

"But, you know," I started again, when I didn't feel any more tremors in Heero's back that warned of leaking in the pipes, "I think we seriously need to start moving on from this shit."

Heero's grip on me changed; suddenly he was simply hugging me and not clutching. And he laughed. "You're hopeless," he informed me.

"Eh?" Figuring it was okay now, I pushed him back so we could look each other in the face. That special smile was there, shining at me. "Hopeless? How is what I said hopeless? Or even funny, for that matter?"

"No, what you said isn't funny." But hell if the asshole wasn't still smiling. "But I do agree with it. We're more than just those two moments."

"Uh – Heero. I just don't want things to be as they've been."

"Me either," he confessed. Heero linked our fingers again, this time holding them up. "I almost lost you. How could I possibly allow myself to continue like this, knowing that?"

I blinked. "Yeah... yeah. Exactly." I thought of that moment again, saw him fall to the ground with his blood falling on my hands. Remembered the agony of it, of knowing I'd killed him. Heero was right. After having lost him – after having felt the horror, the clenching that squeezed my heart – there was no way I could stand to waste even a second.

"Duo – are you all right?"

I shuddered. No; I couldn't afford to lose any more time with him.

Heero was looking at me with that concerned look of his, one that bored through all of my pretensions. "Sorry," I said, and gave him a little smile. That frown of his deepened; he could see the smile was fake. "Remembering."

Those beautiful eyes melted into sadness.

"No, no, I don't want to get into it again." I held up my right hand – the one that wasn't linked to his. "Whenever we start this, you start saying it's your fault."

Heero opened his mouth, but said nothing. And I realized that it _was_ his fault. Because he hadn't told me... but had told someone else. He could have contacted me through Preventors, but he hadn't. He'd gone for some nameless guy. Hell; if he'd wanted to get in touch with someone, why hadn't he at least gotten in touch with Wufei, at least? For crying out-

Oh shit.

I backpedaled helluva quick and desperately tried to rearrange my face. "Uh, so anyway, I just wanted to talk to you so we didn't keep walking on eggshells around here, and, um... yeah."

Heero leaned in a bit, as if testing my lying face by coming ever closer. "Duo, it really wasn't your fault."

I stared at him wide-eyed and held my breath. Was he going to say it? Was he really going to just fess up and tell me what the hell was going on?

"I could have dodged. Hell, I could have avoided the fight altogether. It was just that Quatre surprised me by showing up, and..."

I almost felt... well, I was kind of hurt. Heero was still keeping secrets from me. Worse, now I was feeling sort of suspicious about someone else, someone I would have never questioned under any other circumstances. Why wouldn't Heero just _say_ that he'd sent a message to Preventors? Why wouldn't the man just admit it?

"No, dammit. I fought against you with the intention to kill. I just got lucky that time."

Heero was still wearing that uber-sad expression, but here he smirked a little bit. "I don't think luck is something that would work against me. Besides, you always had rotten luck."

Trying to turn it into a joke, huh? And you gotta love the humor-barb on the end there. It almost got me. "Heero, I'm serious. I think... we seriously fucked things up back there."

Heero sobered enough to nod without smiling. "I agree." His hand squeezed mine. "So where does that leave us?"

Hell if I knew. "Maybe we should... I dunno... at least never do stupid shit like that again? And tell each other the truth from now on?"

"Sounds like a plan to me." He raised our hands up to his lips and kissed the back of my palm. "I love you."

"I love you, too, jackass." But then I stood. Because he still telling me. "Now, let's clean those dishes before the food sticks to the plates."

He grinned and let me lead him back to the kitchen, keeping our hands linked all the way. We had to break up to pick things up and clean and all that boring after-yum work. Heero was silent, though at least things weren't as tense as they'd been during the meal.

He wasn't telling me. He wasn't going to say just what the hell was going on, why he hadn't contacted _me_, or why he'd bothered contacting Headquarters in the first place if all he was going to send was a little note on the boss. Even though we'd _just_ finished promising to tell the truth to each other from now on.

What would he do if I confronted him with it? I imagined it, me turning to him as he continued soaping up the pots. I would yell at him, tell him I knew. Or would I simply tell him I was working on a new case, one involving Caribol and oddly early files on the enemy? What would he say? What would he do? Would he actually fucking turn around and spit it out?

Right. Like I would actually do that. I was far too afraid – afraid that he'd have a completely different response than what I wanted.

Yup. I was definitely a coward.

* * *

I looked into it on my laptop that night despite how much I didn't want to even consider it.

But who else would Heero contact? Thinking about it, the first person Heero would try to get in touch with, if it wasn't going to be Commander Une, should be Wufei. Right? But Wufei had seemed just as clueless as me, and he'd spoken to me several times about having to kill Heero. Had it all been an act? Had he been faking it the entire time? But why?

I searched through Preventor files with the access Une granted me. Not that I needed it to search, but I didn't think Une would appreciate me hacking into her oh so precious system. I must have searched until about three in the morning, but I didn't find anything. And certainly nothing on Wufei. Of course, Wufei knew his way around a computer console. But it wasn't like I didn't know _my_ way around either, and I'd grown a particular attachment to hacking during my training days with Dr. G. It was all about stealth, after all.

"Fucking hell." I closed down my laptop after having made absolutely no progress whatsoever. It was depressing. Maybe I was losing my touch?

I went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth and took care of business and headed back to bed. Sleep came quickly, as soon as I allowed it to. Just like in training. Maybe I wasn't losing my touch – maybe whoever had hidden whatever information I was looking for was damn good at hiding things.

But, dammit, I was better.

I'd find out the truth somehow, no matter how long it took. Since I couldn't exactly get the fucking information straight from the horse's mouth.

* * *

Well, things went pretty normally the next morning. We ate breakfast together – yeah, definitely less tension – and Heero went off to work with a small peck of lips as parting. It made me blush. He hadn't done it before.

And then it was back to my computer. Whee.

I dug as deep as one could without burning a hole in the system, but there was nothing from Wufei that wasn't already in the records. I sighed in relief, then immediately felt a wave of guilt. I'd doubted Wufei, who had done nothing but help me during those days. We'd spent two months together at that damn safehouse, and he and I had both been going mad with worry, and then with depression so thick it had been hard to walk.

He and I had suffered together. Thinking about it, there was no way Wufei had been faking it, even if there'd been a good reason to. If he'd known Heero had been alive, he would have maintained that stoic iciness he was so famous for and never would have stayed in that downstairs bathroom for the three hours that he had.

Of course, that meant that I lost the only lead I'd had. I tossed and turned scenarios in my mind, but none of them added up. Heero would have informed Une if he'd been going to inform anyone at all. Heero would have contacted either Wufei or myself if he'd been unable to catch Une for whatever reason. It didn't make sense that Heero wouldn't follow these courses of action. Who else did Heero trust with his life?

Although, really, how much did I know about Heero and his circle of trusted friends? It had most likely grown while I was away, especially in a place like Preventors, where only the best of the best congregated. He probably had several people he trusted now.

Feeling like a shit, I sent an e-mail to Une asking her to send me a list of those close to one Heero Yuy.

God, I felt like an asshole.

It took me a while to figure out why, but I finally figured that it was probably because I was hiding something from Heero, too. I wanted him to spew everything before I informed him that I was investigating him.

Jesus. I was investigating Heero Yuy.

I received Une's reply to my e-mail and just sat staring at the list blankly for a while.

It wasn't that Une and I didn't trust Heero. We just didn't know what the hell was going on. And through combat experience, not understanding an ally's actions meant finding out why they did what they did without them knowing you were trying to figure it out. Kind of like a secret test of loyalty or something.

But was that really the right way to go about doing it? Going behind Heero's back like this... it didn't feel right. A list of his friends was right in front of me, but the last thing I wanted to do was read it, check out their profiles, go through their correspondence... I felt like a stalker. Or maybe some sort of murderer. I didn't know why. It just seemed... wrong.

I pushed the laptop away and stood. I couldn't bear to do this – to look behind Heero's back and investigate him. Put him under constant suspicion.

Like last night. We'd finally been talking, but I'd been thinking about the odd profile. I'd been questioning him, doubting him, while we spoke. What kind of relationship was that?

I couldn't keep this up. There was no way. I didn't want to crawl around searching for the cobwebs in Heero's soul. They were his, not mine. It made me feel sick, searching behind his back like this.

"I love him," I murmured, needing to say it out loud. "I love him. So I have to trust him. And trust him to tell me the truth."

I squared my shoulders. All right. When Heero came back, I would demand an answer. And I would trust him to tell me the complete truth.

My stomach quivered at the thought.


	3. Thorn Within

Disclaimer: Gundam Wing, shockingly, horrifyingly, belongs to someone else.

* * *

Sub Rosa

Chapter Three

Thorn Within

* * *

I ended up killing some time by dusting the house and sweeping the floor. Heero and I kept the house in good enough shape as it was, but dust was fucking evil and it liked to reproduce like hell – which was my personal opinion as to why dust balls were referred to as dust bunnies.

More, it let me waste about an hour or so of time.

Then it was simply a matter of sitting and doing absolutely fucking nothing. I was starting to get fidgety; I wanted to just confront him and get it over with before my cowardice caught up with me and stopped me.

I ended up playing around with the television, not really watching anything, just flipping through the channels. I finally stopped it on one of those real-life murder mystery shows and started doing my muscle-building exercises.

It was about a half an hour in that I got the uh-oh feeling. I didn't falter in my exercises, but I turned my body on hyper-alert. Someone was outside.

They were only making a slight amount of noise, noise that could be taken as normal if I hadn't undertaken the training from hell. Instead I could tell that instead of leaves rustling, those were footsteps. Instead of the wind, I could tell that a hand had been placed on the house.

I felt kind of stupid when the doorbell rang.

I stopped my exercises and went to the door, rolling my shoulders. My body was still humming on aftereffects as I twisted the knob and pulled the door open.

My body tensed again. There was nobody there.

Instead I had a pretty little bag with a pretty little note on it. I didn't even touch the thing. Left it there and closed the door.

Then I leaned my back against the door and closed my eyes and told myself I was being ridiculous. So I got a turd from a neighborhood kid. What the hell was so scary about that? I was still so fucking twitchy after hearing the kid creeping around that I seriously was about ready to jump the poor sucker. What the fuck?

But then... why the hell was there a note?

"Maybe the kid left another insult," I told myself, trying to calm down. Things had been hectic enough these days; I didn't need any more problems. And maybe all the stress from all the action was making me hyper-sensitive to anything that could be considered danger. I just needed to relax. It was absolutely ridiculous for an ex-Gundam pilot to be afraid of dog shit.

I took a deep breath and opened the door again. There was still no one there. Had I heard someone run away? I hadn't paid too much attention... so I should go on the assumption that the brat was still around.

I had no idea why that thought put me on full alert.

The bag sat, one hundred percent unassumingly, on the porch steps. It couldn't be anything bad; it was a tiny fucking lunch bag. Brown. Boring. And a little white note, stark against the paper. Completely normal.

I had to take another deep breath before I could get my ass to move forward.

Absolutely nothing happened. I would have actually preferred some bad guy to pop out. Maybe a masked man with a sawed-off shotgun or something. But there was absolutely nothing, so I just picked up the bag and brought it inside and quickly shut the door.

I was almost excited for a split second. I'd never been in a community before coming to live with Heero, and it was kind of cool to have community shit happening around me, even if it was literally shit. But then alarm bells went off in my head.

This did not smell like shit. It was not shit.

I almost threw the fucking thing out the window before I calmed myself down. Whatever was inside there, I knew it wasn't a bomb or a grenade or any sort of weapon. I'd been trained to recognize the weight and feel of such things, and this didn't feel like any of the sort. It wasn't even hard, and it leaked. So exactly what the fuck was it?

I figured the safest thing would be to read the note first. Maybe it wasn't something to worry about. Then again, it probably was.

The little white sheet was a small square thing, something like a notepad piece of paper. I stared at it in my hand, flipped it over. There was definitely writing in it, a small chicken-scratch script. I folded it open and read it, my mouth gaping further and further open as I did.

You don't know me yet, but I am certain we will get to know one another much better very soon. I know you are tired of being with him, that you need to be free. I will save you. Count the days.

My first thought was that this was supposed to be for someone else. It seemed so absolutely ridiculous that I double-checked the back to see if there was something I missed. But no, there was nothing else written. I cocked an eyebrow and turned to the bag. A stalker? I had a stalker? It almost made me laugh. A fucking stalker. No way. What a trip.

There was no way in hell I could take that seriously.

I shook the bag and bit my lip hard to keep from chuckling. It sounded mushy, kind of like shit. And it was definitely leaking. I took it out to the kitchen before it completely soaked the carpet. Then I put the thing in the sink and opened it.

"Fucking shit!"

I backed away from the thing like it was a lethal virus, shaking my hands in the air as if I could get the feeling off my hands, even though I had yet to touch it. That... that was most definitely a heart. Most likely of a cat or small dog.

"_Fuck."_

Not a good thing. That was definitely not something to laugh at. And even though the thought of someone stalking me and trying to kidnap me were still pretty fucking hilarious, the idea that he would kill an animal and hand me its heart was twisted and sick.

I spent a few minutes throwing the things straight into a grocery bag and tossing it into the garbage can outside. Then I went about cleaning the carpet, which had turned a light pink, and scrubbed like a madman for several minutes. Apparently blood stains like wine. Gotta remember that.

Then I washed my hands and took care to get the blood out from under my fingernails. I was just about to go outside and check around for the little fucker when I heard the door being opened.

I turned to the sound, sink newly turned off, and stared at Heero, coming in through the front door. My first instinct was to scream 'cover!' But I swallowed it back. It was just some loser with far too much time on his hands and most definitely far too many screws loose. I could easily deal with it myself.

"Hey, Heero!"

"Hi." He smiled at me and dropped his briefcase. "How are things? Huh? Why's the carpet wet?"

I opened my mouth to lie but stopped myself short. If I lied, I would break the oath he and I had _just_ made. I sighed. "I got a weird gift from some secret admirer. I already threw it out."

"Gift? Secret admirer?"

You know, somehow him repeating the word gift made me realize that it was actually the first time I could remember someone giving me something without expecting something in return. But that wasn't quite right, was it? Because I was fairly certain whoever this was wanted something, and they wanted it bad.

"Duo, what are you talking about?"

I escaped my mental musings to find Heero shrugging out of his Preventors jacket, his eyes still focused solely on me. "Ah, don't worry about it. I'll tell you in a second." Then I girded my loins and straightened my back and sucked in a sharp bit of air. I had to do this – I had to ask. I couldn't search behind his back anymore; it felt wrong. Sick, somehow. "Heero, why didn't you contact me?"

He blinked. "What?"

"You contacted Headquarters but didn't contact me? Why? Hell – and why didn't you tell us you'd contacted someone in Preventors to begin with? I don't understand. It's not like you. So why?"

"Duo?" Heero walked up to me rather slowly, simply dropping his coat on the back of the chair. "What are you talking about?"

I wanted to scream. "Duo, we got a file on Caribol's boss detailing his physical description, and it was weeks earlier than the end of our battle with the damn company. We know someone got in touch with Preventors and gave them the information..." I dwindled out right there, my eyes widening. Oh shit.

"Duo?"

"It... wasn't... you?" I staggered back a bit. "But then who?"

Heero shook his head. "From what you told me, I understand that there was information available that shouldn't have been?"

I nodded mutely.

"Duo, I didn't try to contact Headquarters. I've berated myself for that exact piece of negligence for a very long time."

"I believe you."

My response was automatic, words that fell out before I even thought about them. It seemed to stop Heero cold. "Duo?"

It was belatedly that I realized just how oddly vehement the words had been. "Uh, that is, it just didn't make sense that you wouldn't get in touch with us. But then how did the information get into Preventors' database? It leads to you, too – to your console. I don't think Une would have questioned you otherwise, and that's what I found, too."

Heero raked a hand through his hair and finally went back to hang up his coat, though I noticed that he didn't smooth it down like he usually did. "Une put you on the case?" he asked lightly. A sign of danger.

"Yeah. I can't do field work yet, and she knew I'd be interested in finding out. But... in the end, it just didn't feel right to go behind your back like that."

Heero took his time closing the closet door. "I see." Still that dangerous tone. I grabbed the end of my end and started fiddling with it, more to give me something to look at besides his face when he finally turned. "I think I understand where you're coming from..."

"Hey," I said defensively, "I was called into her office, and that's when she told me. It happened fucking yesterday, all right?"

"Oh." He blinked. "Okay."

And that was that. My mouth fell wide open as his entire demeanor changed; his tone, his stance, even his stare changed, all in that one instant. He smirked at my reaction and came to stand in front of me. He closed my jaw for me. "You were telling me about a mysterious gift? From an admirer?"

If his hand wasn't holding my jaw in place, it would have dropped again. Was that jealousy I heard in his voice? I had to move his hand to be able to speak. "Uh, not in a good way, Yuy."

And those eyes hardened again. "Then in what way?"

I let my braid fall from my hand. "Uh, in a stalker way?"

Heero's brows furrowed. "And what way is considered a stalker way?"

Either he was dense, or he was having the same problem I was having, trying to imagine some nutjob fucking around with an ex-Gundam pilot. Yeah. It was so ridiculous it just didn't even enter our minds. "The hiding outside the house and leaving an organ and a love note on the front porch kind of way."

Heero just stared at me, his eyes as wide as saucers. _"What?!"_

"Yeah – said organ is now in the trash outside-"

Heero was already through the living room and into the kitchen before I gave up on explanations.

He stormed straight through the house and out the door, and before I could catch up with him, the bag was in his hands. He looked a bit more horrified than was necessary. After all, we'd seen human organs before, and we'd pretty much become desensitized to it. Plus, the idea of me being stalked was absolutely fucking classic. But he was just standing there looking into the bag like hell's gates had opened up right there on the back porch.

"Uh, Heero?"

"This – when did you get this?" His eyes flashed up to mine, sparking like fire, and then right before my eyes they cooled and calmed and iced over until the Perfect Soldier was standing in front of me.

I sighed and touched his face, sweeping my fingers from his brow to his jaw. Those eyes flickered. "Heero, I agree that it's sad that the cat or whatever was killed, but are you fucking serious?" I smiled right at him, and life returned to those beautiful orbs. "It's a stalker targeting the pilot of the Deathscythe. Do you really think it'd be so easy for me to fall? I'm wounded."

"That's just it." And those eyes hardened again, though thank God he didn't go Soldier on me again. "You _are_ injured. You're still recovering. More.... more, to do this..." His eyes scorched into mine. "You said there was also a love letter?"

"More like a note," I stipulated quickly, seeing the gleam in that cobalt gaze.

"Show me," he ordered.

So I just rolled my eyes and led him over to the kitchen counter, where I'd left the note to clean up the heart. Heero picked it up and read it and paled. "What... what the hell does this mean?"

"It means the stalker thinks he's Prince Charming." I shrugged widely and grinned, but Heero seemed to miss the humor.

"It says that you don't want to be with me."

"And if you believe that for even a second, I will fucking punch you." Heero's eyes turned a little hopeless... a little unsure. "Dammit, Yuy, knock it off. I love you, okay?" I blew my bangs out of my face. "Je-sus. I can't believe I have to remind you of-"

Heero kissed me fiercely on the lips. "I love you, too. I'll get this down to Une and-"

"Whoa, whoa, slow down there, Gonzalez. That's not necessary. Are you kidding? Calling the cops is the most we need to do. Special Ops for this just seems kind've like overkill, considering he's fucking with a goddamn Gundam pilot."

It took Heero a while to let that one sink in, but when he did he half-glared at me. _"Two."_

"Huh?"

He leaned in and kissed me again, taking his time this round, even using the hand not holding the note to cup the back of my head and pull me into better contact with him. "Two Gundam pilots," he murmured against my lips, and my head just fucking spun. I grabbed his arms as his lips returned again, devouring mine. His scent consumed me.

"Let's call the cops," Heero said. He started to pull away.

"No. Fuck cops." I tugged him back, leaned up and kissed him. How come Heero was just that bit taller than me? Wasn't he of some sort of Asian descent? No fair. How'd he get to be so tall?

Heero laughed, but in the end he pushed me away. "No, love. Not now. Not yet. We need to take care of this first."

I growled. "Come _on_."

He pecked my lips. "No. When he finally make love, there will be no distractions."

I blushed fit to implode. "Dammit, Heero! That's not fair." I pulled away from him and tried to get myself back into some semblance of order. It wasn't really working. "Saying shit like that."

He just laughed at me.

I scowled at out kitchen wall, my back to him. "But, you know... as dangerous as this is for the normal person... it really isn't that dangerous to me – us."

"I'm not certain about that, Duo."

"Huh?" I said again, turning to him.

That slip of paper was in his hand. He held it up for me to see. "The person who wrote this – they were dead serious. And if they know about the problems you and I are having, it's only a short step toward understanding just who you are – and what you're capable of. They probably wouldn't take this action without planning things through to the best of their ability. The fact that they sent warning means that they're confident of their ability to get you, despite everything you can do. It may simply be nothing more than some crackpot off his rocker, but it could also be a much more serious threat. We should take this seriously."

"Yeah, yeah." I waved a hand and rolled my eyes. "Mr. Assumptions Lead To Mistakes."

"Exactly. Duo, I have to worry about this. I can't lose you." Ouch, the pinch of guilt once again biting my ass. "Not so soon after finally resolving things a bit. And of course, I should say thank you – thank you for telling me all of this."

If anything, my blush got worse. "Uh, yeah. Welcome."

Heero placed the paper on the table and brushed something off my shirt. "Let's call the cops."

Great. The cops. Right. "Fine. And when this all ends up being no big fucking deal, you'll owe me big time."

It was Heero who went over to the phone. After all, I sure as hell wasn't gonna make the call. "Duo, if this ends up being no big deal, I won't care if I owe you for the rest of our lives."

I huffed. "Overly dramatic twit."

He just laughed and punched in the call. "And that would be your fault."

* * *

Agh! I don't know why, but it's really hard for me to write this! _


	4. Sweet Amber

Disclaimer: Gundam Wing, shockingly, horrifyingly, belongs to someone else.

Note: Mega uber-huge thank you to Wind Dancer for the Happy Birthday props. ^_^

* * *

Sub Rosa

Chapter Four

Sweet Amber

* * *

Yeah, I'll skip right over the boring-ass cop visit. We were both sat down and interviewed and we both gave the same information in separate rooms about three times and they asked us stupid questions we couldn't hope to answer, shit like, 'do you know of anybody who would want you dead?' I fucking laughed at that one.

And then Heero and I both sat down in the living room with the dumb fucks and politely listened to their garbage about what to do to protect ourselves – apparently saying Heero's part of the Preventors doesn't mean we know how to protect ourselves, although they did share a pretty interesting little then-why-the-fuck'd-ya-call-us look, one that had me smirking at Heero for about a full fucking minute. And then another hour after that they decided to get the hell out of our house and _I_ decided that Heero already fucking owed me and to hell with waiting for him to pay up.

"We're going out to dinner," I informed him, glaring at him and then the wall clock – past eight o'clock and hell I was going to cook at that hour.

Heero seemed to understand the look I passed him; he gave up and acquiesced to my order without argument.

So off we went to a restaurant. We ended up in a Texas Steakhouse, just about a ten minute drive from Heero's house, and then we were sitting and staring at each other rather awkwardly.

"We need to do this more often," Heero sighed, smiling sheepishly at me from across the table. It really was pathetic; I couldn't think of a time when he and I had just sat down somewhere and talked. Hung out with each other.

Wait... did that make this... our first date?

I balked at the very idea and shoved it out of my mind completely. It wasn't like Heero was taking it any more seriously than it should be taken. So we were out eating together. Whoopee. How long had he and I been living together? Going out on a date now seemed a little... backwards.

It was after our appetizer arrived that I realized that we might as well be going backwards, since after all said time, I had yet to screw him.

"Duo? Something wrong? Do you not like it?"

I chuckled nervously. "Uh, no. It's good." I took another bite to prove it and shoved the thought a little bit farther into the crevices of my brain.

* * *

"So." I thought about something to say as we walked back to the car. It was dark as pitch out, officially nighttime. Heero hadn't responded to the entire night as a date.

Why the fuck was I thinking of it as a date, anyway? It most definitely was _not_. We went out for dinner because we didn't feel like cooking and cleaning up. That sounded more like a married couple than anything even remotely resembling a date.

So... maybe that meant I _wanted_ it to be a date?

Ah, not cool. No no no. That would be dumb. I waited as Heero went around to his side of the car and unlocked the doors, then opened mine, intent on escaping.

My back tensed.

Those footsteps were back.

I turned toward the alleyway leading to the back of the restaurant.

"Duo?" I held up a hand for silence. The footsteps had stopped. They were definitely the same – same weight, same pace, same stride. It was the same guy. Or some extremely improbable walk-alike.

Heero closed his door and locked the car. His eyes were hard again. I sent him as much information as I could silently – danger, enemy. I pointed toward the alleyway, and his eyes searched through. Heero's cat eyes were definitely better than mine.

The footsteps began retreating.

We reacted as one, racing toward the small area, Heero automatically taking the lead. The footsteps suddenly stopped. Heero and I paused as one, listening. Only fools continued running blindly in the dark when an enemy they were chasing suddenly stopped running. Obviously the enemy thought they had a sudden advantage.

Without a thought to it, I snatched at the building to my left and climbed up the side. I immediately regretted it – my muscles sharply protested, and my fingers were instantly bloody. Heero turned in time to see me scuttling across the wall of the restaurant like a fucking spider, working fast because there was no way to stay silent while walking across this damn wall. My shoulders were more than happy to inform me of their unhappiness, even from the start.

Then I was pushing off and landing and I stood there kind of dumbly for a moment. There was absolutely no sound at all. Okay, not quite true – a car passed on the road, people inside the restaurant talked and dishes clanged and the phone inside rang. But from the alley, I heard nothing.

"Duo, get back here!"

There was a bit of panic in that voice, and that's what made me turn back to him. In the darkness, he was nothing but a faintly darker shadow amidst lighter ones. "Heero? What's wrong?" I wasn't stupid; I took the wall path back to him, let our quarry escape. When I got close enough, Heero grabbed me in his arms and simply pulled me away from the wall and the alley and back into the street. A man walking his dog stared wide-eyed from across the street.

"Heero, what-"

"Thank God." And he buried his face in my hair.

It was a little awkward, patting his back while being held, and I distinctly felt my blush reach epic proportions as he continued to stand there with me and calm himself. I tried to not put too much weight on his stomach.

It took a while, but finally his breath evened out and his hands stopped cutting off my circulation. When he stood his head straight, I cocked an eyebrow up at him. "So... minor breakdown over?" I asked him.

He blushed this time. "Yeah." And he set me on my feet.

I dusted off my clothes and tried to act like we hadn't just done something totally humiliating in the middle of public. "So do you wanna explain to me just what happened?"

Heero took a deep breath, then retraced his steps toward the alley. When he came back, he held a slip of paper.

Join me.

I hissed. "Dammit; it _was_ him."

Heero took a deep breath. "I was afraid..." He shook his head. "I shouldn't have been."

I considered teasing him for it for about half a millisecond. "Don't sweat it. We'll get him next time."

Heero didn't seem too excited by that prospect.

I just shook my head and clasped his shoulder. "Car? Home?" It was like he awakening from a momentary trance; he shot one last glare at the alleyway and turned to the car. When he unlocked the car, I leaned in, grabbed his face, turned it and kissed him fiercely. He had a hilarious deer-in-headlights look that made my feral grin widen even more. "Let the fucker figure it out."

I turned from his possessive stare and got inside, shut the door and clicked my seatbelt in place.

The tension in Heero's back and shoulders seemed to lessen the farther we got from the restaurant. I guessed we wouldn't be going out again. At least not without a SWAT team breathing down our necks. It _almost_ took my mind off the fact that Heero and I had unwittingly just gone on a date. Or whatever.

But not quite.

And worse, that fuck-all kiss had definitely been hot. Very hot. Agh – I needed my mind to switch to something else before it became impossible to hide my personal musings.

So I thought about my little stalker and exactly how stupid he had to be to leave me _another_ message, and this one under my nose _again_. Was he underestimating me, or was he just so extraordinarily deluded that he thought he could actually get away with this shit?

It was, to me, seriously fucking funny. But Heero seemed genuinely distressed about it. Should I talk to him about it? I cast a glance his way, but his eyes were focused so intently on the road I thought it'd be best to look out the window. The trees by the highway were a blur of gray and black. Heero looked _pissed_. Then again, if I saw notes left for _Heero_, I might just go on a killing spree.

Seeing it from that perspective, I could kind of understand Heero's reaction. After all, we'd only just gotten back together after a truly disastrous mission. We needed a break. Time to cool down, learn more about each other... relax in the continued existence of one another. This was not conducive to relaxation.

Speaking of which... "Hey, Heero."

He grunted. Great. Mr. Monosyllable had returned.

I turned my gaze back to him, but his eyes never strayed from the road. "What do _you_ think about the leaked information?"

Finally he looked at me. "The what?"

I bit the inside of my lip to keep from smiling. "The information on Caribol's leader, Heero."

He still looked a bit disoriented. Probably tuning out from his delicate plans to lure out and kill my stalker. "We'll have to find out who it is."

Well thank you for that. "And I have to admit to Her Happiness that I clued you in."

He snorted. "Yeah. That, too." He reached out and sought my hand. I freely gave it over, and his fingers entwined within my own. "I'll go with you for that one."

"Why thank you, Mr. Bodyguard."

He grinned, even as his eyes watched the stoplight ahead. His foot pressed on the brake. "Your welcome, Mr. Popular."

I laughed even as he grimaced, already disliking the slip of the tongue. "Aw. Jealous?"

He snorted a quick laugh. "Hardly. You chose me, after all."

No fair. That was a quick shot straight to the gut, and I couldn't fucking kiss him when he was pressing the gas and getting the car forward. Fucking stoplight with its impeccable timing. "Damn straight I did," I said breezily. "Nothing says manly like being able to bend steel."

He laughed outright. "Smartass."

"Synonym for charm?"

He turned that big grin of his on me, and I was just fucking toast. No way I could hide my interest now. "Sure."

His tone was almost patronizing. I flipped him the bird with my free hand and hoisted my nose in the air. "Guess that means yes, then, huh?"

His grin only widened. "Sure."

I conceded defeat with a raspberry and stuck my tongue out at him. Before he could comment on my maturity, I leaned on his shoulder. "So what're we gonna do?"

He sighed. "First, you're going to lean up; what if I get into an accident?"

"Like you'd let anything happen," I said, closing my eyes.

He didn't say anything to that, but his fingers untangled from mine and encircled my shoulders. He sighed. "Then we'll clean up those hands of yours and check you for other injuries."

I looked at my bloody fingers and huffed my bangs out of my eyes. "Boring."

"Then don't climb walls," he admonished lightly. I saw him take the turn off the freeway into our neighborhood. "After that... I suppose we'll have to decide where to start searching."

"Well, I know where we _don't_ have to search," I told him, staring significantly up at him.

He humphed. "Thanks so much."

I just grinned unrepentantly and shrugged.

* * *

I stared over Heero's shoulder as he checked through his computer for the list of people who accessed the computers the day the transfer went through. It went through _Heero's_ computer, though, and as I'd already told him, it used his password.

"So someone hacked it." He scowled and changed the thing as I watched. I closed my eyes to give him his privacy. Besides – I probably could have hacked into it if I really wanted to. "Shit. That's going to make this difficult."

"I've already started piecing through it, trying to find a hack or something, but I have yet to find it. Doesn't mean it's not there, though."

"I didn't leave a paper trail of any kind."

"No shit?" I rolled my eyes. "We can memorize passwords a lot longer than the one you were using, Heero. Besides, you're superhuman. Why would a superhuman need paper?"

He shot me a half-glare over his shoulder. I grinned down at him. "So? You finding anything, Mr. Can Pretend To Be A Cyborg?"

Heero hissed at the poor joke. "No."

"No?" I gasped in shock. "Are your circuits twisted?" I leaned forward a bit more. "How about checking speed of entry? Catalog it to the average speed of familiarity..."

Heero did as I said, deftly ignoring my jibe. Thirty names popped up. "Hold on; let me come up with my list." I wrapped my arms around him and opened a new tab, punching into my e-mail and bringing up Une's last e-mail. I copied it and put it into Word Document, then sent off a reply to Une informing her of my defection.

"Coward," Heero murmured, and I laughed.

"Damn straight."

We compared the lists until my list in Word had only the names that were echoed in Heero's hacked list. "Well, we still have over ten people. You're fucking popular, Heero."

"Yeah? And _you_ have a new e-mail."

I grimaced. "Dun dun duhhn." I opened it and read, wincing. Well, Une was pissed. I'll spare details; suffice to say see ripped me a couple new ones and at the end demanded a full report. 'And it'd better be the best fucking report I've read in my life, Maxwell.' I wanted to hide under the bed.

"You're screwed, Duo." Heero's voice was laughing, but then one of his hands whipped back and snatched at my cheek. He half-turned in the seat and smiled up at me. "I'll take some of the heat."

"Nah. Don't want you getting flayed alive, too." I pursed my lips and sent her another reply. 'Aye aye, Scary Boss.' It was reaching one o'clock in the morning, but her reply was just as quick and just as sharp.

'You don't want to see how scary I can be, 02.'

I whistled. "Whoo, sca-ry." I grinned. "Save me, Heero!" My arms squeezed around his shoulders, hugged his collarbone. "Sweep me onto your white horse and rise me away from the evil dragon!"

He just laughed at me and turned back to the computer. His hands curled around mine. "I thought I was supposed to kill the dragon?"

I thought that over. "That would work, too."

"But I thought you didn't want me getting flayed alive?"

"Semantics," I muttered, and made him laugh again.

"Come on, let's go to bed for now. You apparently have a hell of a report to write up tomorrow."

I scowled. "Yeah, rub it in, Yuy."

He just backed out of the Preventors system and started shutting things down. I had no idea why watching those fingers blur over the keyboard made me horny. I closed my eyes, sucked in a breath, and told myself that if Heero didn't want to do it yet, then I could just fucking wait. And suffer.

Was it the kiss after the restaurant? No, I didn't think so, although it sure as hell hadn't helped. Actually, I thought it might have very well been all the camaraderie. I'd missed it so much over the past months that joking and laughing with him like this had been... I carefully let go of Heero and backed up a step. I had missed it. And now that it was coming to an end, I felt almost... scared. I didn't want to let go of him, to leave and go to my own bed and try to ignore just how hard I was.

Dammit, we'd had our first official – well, still unofficial, but whatever – out first official date of sorts, and that after a very long, very hard few months. Heero had held me, and since then we really hadn't let go of each other all that much. It was like we were finally starting to reconnect – or maybe even connect to begin with? And we'd been laughing and carrying on, even while doing something so very serious as trying to find a potential mole (or whatever the fuck the guy was).

And even though there was nothing altogether _sexual_ about any of that, it somehow made me need Heero so much it was physically painful. I wanted to thread my hands through his hair. I wanted to look into those eyes of his and see the same emotions I felt in those cobalt depths. I wanted to touch him. I wanted to be touched. I wanted to be gasping and sweating and reaching for something I'd only felt after a few dedicated minutes alone in a bathroom.

I shook my head to dislodge those very vivid images and managed a bright smile when Heero turned. "Thanks for the save there, Heero. Totally going to love writing that report."

His grin was far too close to that old smirk. It made my heart jump. Worse, it made another part of me jump, too. I mentally cursed. "Of course. Have fun."

I gave him a fake scowl and huffed out of s room. At the last minute, I turned my head to look at him. He was watching me very seriously, but he wasn't looking in my eyes, and there was no lust anywhere on his features. Instead those beautiful eyes lingered on my fingers, on the gauze that bound them tightly. They hadn't started bleeding again; he was just brooding.

"They're fine, Heero," I said quietly. My voice made his eyes snap back up to me. It was definitely disheartening – I was freaking burning to death, and he was worried about my physical health. Not exactly on the same page. "_I'm_ fine. Really. I've almost regained all my muscle tone, and my muscles only hurt when I do stupid shit."

"Like climbing a wall?" he asked. His voice was trying to sound wry, but all I heard was concern. Concern and fear.

"Yeah," I admitted. "Like climbing a wall. But I didn't tear anything. I'm a Gundam pilot, too, remember? I heal fast. Same as you – well, not as psychotically well as you, but still. Fact remains. I'm really okay."

He nodded, but he didn't seem convinced. "You should get to bed."

"Like I'm the only one recovering," I muttered, but I acquiesced and left the room.

Yeah. One hundred percent, totally and definitely disheartening. It took a very, very long time to get my sorry ass asleep. It did not surprise me in the slightest that I had dreams that made waking up even more painful than trying to sleep.


	5. The Small Hours

Disclaimer: Gundam Wing, shockingly, horrifyingly, belongs to someone else.

* * *

Sub Rosa

Chapter Five

The Small Hours

* * *

One extremely long, extremely cold shower later, I moved over to the table, towel tied firmly around my hips, and glared at my own personal computer. Write the best report she'd ever read. Pfft. She'd read probably every bloody report while working for Oz, then had probably taken over Preventors and done the exact same thing.

Well, I'd just have to shock her into admitting defeat.

I spent the rest of the morning clicking on the keyboard. Only when I was done did I celebrate with some food. I ripped a bite off my tuna fish sandwich and grinned with glee as I copied the report and sent it to Her Scariness.

I went back to the kitchen and pressed my forehead against the cool glass of one of the kitchen windows. Last night, I had woken up no less than five times, hard and sweaty and in _pain_. I'd been deathly afraid of getting up and taking care of the problem, too, because a certain someone was fine-tuned to my every movement. I wouldn't be surprised if he'd been up all night, too, listening to me toss and turn and wondering if I was in pain. Son of a bitch.

This was ridiculous. Heero and I had lived together in this house before the Caribol shit had reached its peak, forcing us to separate from one another. Sure I'd felt the desire to have sex with Heero before, but it had never gotten so extraordinarily out of control. I had not ever lost so much fucking sleep due to sex before in my life. It was a daunting thing to acknowledge.

And then I sighed and straightened and stalked to my room. Heero would kill me for standing out in the middle of the kitchen wearing nothing but a towel when some psycho stalker pissed around outside our house.

So I closed my doors and pulled the blinds down over the windows and dropped the towel. I'd managed to cool down in the long-ass shower, struggling to _not_ take care of the problem. Apparently somewhere in my mind I'd decided to become a martyr. I wanted to do it with Heero, and I wanted to wait until he gave the okay. Was that stupid? Yes. Was I going to break that decision? Fuck no.

I slipped on a pair of slacks in preparation for another difficult night, then tucked on a polo shirt. Wouldn't do to wear slacks and a t-shirt. Even when I was in the house alone.

I went back out to the kitchen and fixed myself a second sandwich, the first one having been inhaled somewhere during my musing spree, and chowed down on it. Whatever my personal musings on Heero and me and bedtime activities, I had my own shit I needed to take care of. I still needed to find our little Fail Prince in Prevenntors. I needed to do my exercises. More, I seriously needed to worry about my poor Wing waiting in port for me to return. Once I healed, shouldn't I return to the sky? I didn't want to just waste my precious Wing, but I couldn't exactly have it sitting lonely in the port for the rest of eternity.

Especially since it was damn expensive to do so.

I did my exercises first, carefully working my arms. Then after I finished, I re-wrapped the gauze around my fingers. They really weren't all that bad, just scraped and bruised and a little sore. I tested them out for a moment. It seemed I couldn't go a week without getting myself messed up somehow.

Then I returned to my computer and got my ass on the Preventors system again. It took only a few minutes to reacquaint myself with the remaining list of people and started from the man he'd worked with last. Apparently it was some old hat named Rick Costello. I looked him up in Preventors' files. He was a balding guy who'd been called in from Treize's old faction. His psych evaluation showed him to be a rigid rule-follower with what appeared to be a black-and-white view of the world. It was as good a place to start as any.

Heero and Rick had gone on a mission just before our unintentional reunion; the man had asked for Heero's back-up for an arms op while Wufei was out on a narcs case. They'd gone in, made the bust; there was no problem during the entirety of the thing. Heero was like that – any potential problem just died stillborn.

I searched through the database, loaded through the guy's encrypted files, and searched through his computer and Heero's computer. Neither had been on at the same time, but the man didn't log onto his computer after Heero's computer was used. Still, he hadn't left until an hour afterwards. I kept him open as a maybe and moved on.

It took me fucking _hours_, but I narrowed it down to only three people. I looked at the list with wide eyes. Rick was there, and a guy named Alex Bolden.

And Zechs Marquise.

Of course I wanted to blame the little shit immediately. I hated him like I hated nobody else I had to fight during that damn war. Except maybe Tubarov. Hated him, too.

I drew a deep breath and leaned back. Figuring I should update Miss Creepy, I scuttled out of Preventors and checked into my e-mail. She'd already sent me a reply to my report. I grinned. She'd sent it back an hour after I'd sent it to her. Good grief. Had she been hanging onto the freaking computer or something?

I clicked it open and read her reply. And bust out laughing. "'Your vocabulary is as eloquent as always,' huh? Well, I guess that means she forgives me." I thanked her for the compliment and informed her of the three suspects left.

With that done, all I had to do was brood over what to do with my Wing. My poor little Demon's Wing. It had been so neglected lately, it was probably pissed with me. I sighed; I should definitely go check the poor thing out. If nothing else, she would need her oil changed. It was downright cruel to neglect one's baby, right?

Okay. Maybe I was a little insane.

I huffed my bangs out of my face and left Heero a quick note telling him I'd be back and to not freak out. Then I checked in with the port to let them know I'd be coming and to get an oil fill ready and left the house.

* * *

My poor baby looked so depressed and pathetic it made me sad. She was dusty from nearby liftoffs; she had poor oil, she hadn't been checked in forever, and worse: when I went inside, though the cockpit and the hull and everything else on the front end of my precious baby was one hundred percent unpainted.

"Oh, you poor thing." I touched the bare wall and winced for her. My Wing had been with me through hell itself, battling with me, staying with me, listening to me. And I'd repaid her by leaving her all alone.

"Sorry, baby." Ignoring how ridiculous it would look – after all, I was alone – I kissed her cool metal and backed away. "I'll take care of you now."

I spent the next four hours watching the workers as they changed her oil and helping them clean her spotless. Then I went out and bought some paint for her and a couple rollers and, giving in to the inevitable, the crimson paint and brushes for my damn poems that I would write and would be pissed doing with old paint and tucked it all into the back of the car. I would like to note, right now, that I had always had a damn car. Hidden in Preventors' garage. In the back. The far back.

Returning to my Demon's Wing had me slowing my car down and rolling down my windows. Cops were patrolling the area. My eyebrows lifted as one of them came toward me.

"Duo Maxwell?" The dude didn't even give me a chance to respond before he flashed me his badge. "I'm Sergeant Daniel Weller; I've been told to inform you that, and I quote, 'bending steel doesn't mean shit if I can't reach it in time.' Come with me, please."

I didn't move, despite the fact that only fucking Yuy would come up with that shit. "What for?"

The man seemed like he'd already taken more than his share of impertinence for the day and wasn't about to regenerate some patience any time soon. "Sir, you've been on the missing person's list for about two hours."

The fuck?

I gave a long-winded sigh and rolled my eyes. "Where is he?"

The man hesitated. "I believe he is looking over your ship. We received news that you were here just a small while ago."

"Yeah, go figure," I muttered darkly. "Thanks, Weller. I'll take care of this." I didn't give him time to answer, just stepped on the gas enough to charge past him. Jesus Christ. I'd left a fucking note. Just what the fuck did Heero think he was doing?

Sure enough, Heero's car was sadly and pathetically sitting outside my goddamn ship and hell if, after slamming my door and stomping up the lift, he wasn't looking at a surviving poem in the kitchen with sad eyes.

"Yuy, just what the hell do you think you're doing?!"

Heero turned to me. He wasn't surprised – he couldn't possibly be, what with my footsteps pounding through the silent hull. He wasn't thrilled, either – go figure there. In fact, when Heero turned to look at me, those sad eyes morphed into absolutely livid.

"Me?" Heero's voice was ice-cold. Danger tone. "What about you? You disappeared."

"Disappeared? I came here! I fucking told you-"

"You didn't tell me anything." It was unbalancing to see Heero like this, so furious I could see death in his eyes. Somehow I hadn't imagined being looked at like that _again_, again with those eyes that looked far too much like Cyborg-Heero. I shivered. "You didn't say a word to me. When I got back home, the house was empty. You weren't anywhere."

"Of course not," I spat, hackles raising. His eyes were turning deader and deader and I couldn't stand it. Worse... worse, his attitude was hitting _my_ last nerve, too. "I don't have to stay in the house twenty-four seven, Heero Yuy. I'm free to come and go as I please."

"With injuries like those?" he demanded, icily glaring at my hands. I'd taken off the bandages in defeat mid-way through cleaning Wing, and my fingers, with their cuts and scrapes, were laid bare for him to see.

"Yeah. It's almost like I've had worse."

"This could have waited," he gritted out.

"Well I wanted to do it now. That sure as fuck isn't a crime, now is it, Mr. Preventor?" I shot back.

Heero got in my space, his eyes looking down on me with contempt. I held my ground more out of defiance than any sort of confidence. If Heero and I got into a fight right now, I had absolutely no doubt that he would win, recovering abdomen or not. "You had no right to leave-"

"I don't need your permission, Papa Yuy!"

"The hell you don't! Leaving the house, leaving no notice, when you're still recovering from a fucking suicide attempt!"

I'd opened my mouth to respond to the middle part of his little statement when my mind just fucking blanked. Suicide attempt. Of course. Of course his mind would go there. He'd lost sight of me. Lost track of me. Who's to say I wouldn't throw myself halfway across the world and jump into a hotel bed and toss it back one more time?

Ouch.

That one hurt.

I managed to get my mouth closed. "I told you I'd never try that again."

"Then you shouldn't have left without letting me know somehow. What else am I supposed to think?"

"Uh, I don't know. How about I went grocery shopping?" At Heero's mutinous face, I relented. "Heero," I said soothingly, "I _did_ leave a note. Right on the kitchen table. Clear view."

"No. There was nothing."

I took a deep, calming breath. Reason always worked on Heero before; it should work now. "Heero, I wouldn't have left the house without leaving a note. I wouldn't worry you like that. It said I was leaving for a bit. It said not to freak out. Okay?"

I was interrupted by a knock behind me. It was Weller. "Excuse me; what are we supposed to do?"

I turned to him. "Leave. And write a really rude report about this guy here." I pointed to Heero behind me. "Make sure to note the abuse of power."

"Duo," Heero growled.

"I really am sorry about all this," I told the man. "It was a huge waste of manpower. Heero will be writing an appropriate apology to your department soon."

The man looked a little scared. Probably because of Heero's glare. "Um, right. We'll be going, then."

"Thanks for everything, man!" I called, and waved him off. When I turned back to Heero, he looked confused. Angry, of course, but confused. And what might have been a little hopeful.

"Did you...really leave a note?"

His eyes were melting again, thank God. I couldn't stand that ice-cold glare anymore. It was rather odd to learn this about myself, since I was usually the one perfectly immune to such a look. Sure couldn't take it anymore. It made the memories return. But hell if I was telling the man that. "Yes, Yuy. I really did."

He shook his head. "There wasn't one. I'd searched everywhere I could think of. I'd checked the kitchen several times. I hadn't ever found a note. Anywhere."

I frowned. "Did it fall off?"

"There was nothing on the floor, either."

I believed him. Heero wasn't the type to do something half-heartedly. "Then what the hell?" But I dropped the subject altogether and raised my hand to his face. "Are we okay?"

He sighed. "I don't know. I think my heart is still not beating."

I tried to imagine it; tried to imagine expecting Heero to be at the house and not finding him anywhere. It was hard, because I didn't have much of an assumption to have him around constantly. But for a very short second I could see it, and it scared me. I think I sighed, too. "I think I understand. But..." I wish I could take his fears and destroy them. I wasn't going to try again. I'd learned my lesson. But fears never listened to reason.

"I know." His hand lifted to rest on top of mine. "I overreacted. I just... it just made me think of..." Of the search. Of what they'd found.

"I know."

His eyes fluttered closed for a moment. "It was him."

His words were so off-track from where my mind sat that it took almost a full minute for me to catch up. "You think my stalker did it?"

"Took the note."

"Why? He could've just followed me."

"You can't tell me you wouldn't catch someone following you."

...Point. "So he took the note and followed me after waiting a while."

"That's what I think." Heero's fingers started to tremble a bit. "Which means-"

"He's been watching me this whole time." I frowned. "But I hadn't felt anything. I haven't felt anything _yet_. That's not normal." It scared me, actually. Had I become too used to having civilians around me?

"Same."

I blinked. Well, it wasn't me, then. "Something's up with this guy. He's not a normal psycho stalker, after all."

Heero didn't seem very happy with this little conclusion. "Duo, I have to apologize. How I acted..."

I huffed my bangs from my face and rubbed my neck. "Yeah, you definitely owe me. I want a fudge sundae. Pay up."

He grinned despite the chagrin in his eyes. "What are you, ten?"

I scrunched up my face. "When I was ten, I was running down streets with a slice of bread. And I was only about a year or so from meeting my dear professor. Or had I met him by age ten? I'm kinda in the dark on the exact age. Besides, that's not the point. I want a sundae. You owe me. You are buying me a fudge sundae. Got it?"

"Got it, got it. You'd think you were pregnant."

"Oh, ha ha. Male Pregnancy joke. Will the hilarity never cease?" It turned from him and started to lead him back out of my Wing.

Heero grabbed my wrist and pulled me back. "First, I wanna have my own dessert first."

"Isn't that a cliché?" I asked, but he just shut me up with a long, hard kiss.

It was hot. Hot and long and erotic. And it got me hard in no time. All that work I'd spent getting myself calm was moot. His hands snagged in my braid, pulled my head back. I didn't even have the strength to _think_ stop before suddenly I was drowning in need.

When he broke it off and grinned and pulled me to the car, it was almost impossible to let the light mood take me over. Definitely impossible to get the entirety of my body to go along with the facade. I was infinitely glad I'd worn the slacks.

And when we reached the ice cream parlor, I was even gladder to taste the ice-cold ice cream on my tongue, strong enough to chase away Heero's taste. A taste that echoed itself in my dreams again that night.


	6. Frantic

Disclaimer: Gundam Wing, shockingly, horrifyingly, belongs to someone else.

* * *

Sub Rosa

Chapter Six

Frantic

* * *

Heero and I hadn't gotten to working on figuring out who the mystery info-sender was, but we had a legitimate excuse: we were emotionally exhausted. More, I didn't want to deal with watching Heero working on his computer again the bare night after realizing that he looked sexy while doing it. Not a good idea. Especially not in the state I'd already been in.

Which was entirely Heero's fucking fault.

Who could possibly concentrate after being kissed like that? It wasn't fair. The kiss had been hard, demanding, almost fucking desperate. I'd been lost as soon as our lips met.

Not shockingly, I had a cold shower again. It was becoming a fucking habit.

I checked my e-mail and found two separate letters from Une waiting for me. The first thanked me for the update. The second one cussed me out.

'If you're going to be so stupid as to buff and prime your fucking ship, which is being paid to stock in dock by my company's money, the least you can do is leave my goddamn subordinate a note. You are in the middle of an investigation. Why don't you finish that before you give me any more fucking trouble?'

I bit my lip.

'Language,' I wrote. Then, 'and I did leave a note. Your subordinate needs a psych eval.'

I sent it and wondered if she'd relay the joke to Heero. Probably not. Lord forbid someone find out she had a sense of humor.

I considered returning to my Wing just for fuck's sake more than the need to paint, but I let the idea drop and exited my e-mail. She had one small thing right; I was in the middle of an investigation. Telling Heero what I was doing didn't mean he was suddenly a part of said investigation.

More importantly, if I finished this before Heero returned, then I wouldn't have to watch him typing anymore. Thank God.

With that beautiful incentive, I hacked my way back into Une's system and started searching through, trying to finish what Heero and I had started the day before yesterday.

With only three left, it didn't take nearly as long as it would have if we'd done it from the beginning. I sat back and stared at the screen for a few moments. The pattern wasn't perfect. Matching a person typing something familiar with something unfamiliar could never be perfect. Hell, even when typing in the same thing day after day, a person will type the same thing slightly differently every single time, and there was no guarantee that they wouldn't mess up even the simplest of words.

Of course, one had to remember that hacking into Heero's password, figuring out what it was, required an extreme amount of skill. Hell, if Heero hadn't gotten in touch with anyone in the department, it took an extremely intelligent person to figure out the information _to_ send in.

Taking all of that into account, it really only made sense that the information had been sent in by Zechs Merquise.

I took a deep breath. I had a huge prejudice against the guy. He'd shown up constantly, always in our way. And when he _did_ show up, it was always for some frivolous battle against Heero. A battle that never had a point. He fought Heero not because they were enemies but because he wanted to see who was stronger. Such a child-like reason to want to kill.

Worse, so much worse, was the fact that I _loved_ Heero Yuy. Even back during the war, I was fucking hot for him. Which meant that I despised Zechs with a fervor that bordered on ridiculous. I'd specifically ordered Une that my working with her meant not ever having to acknowledge Zechs' existence on her payroll.

That, of course, was not to say that I was against the very large amount of men on her payroll that had also worked under Oz, that had fought against us during the war. The war was over. I had no more reason to want them dead.

Oh, but Zechs... oh, yes. I definitely wanted him dead.

I had to leave the computer. I paced the room for a minute, raked my hand through my hair in a habit one hundred percent stolen from Heero. I could never be definitely certain that it was him. And Lord knew the weasel knew how to squeeze out of tight spots. Still, everything pointed to him. The key matching didn't add up for the Rick guy whatsoever, and Costello was a great fighter, but checking out his skills, he didn't seem the type to figure out Heero's password. Or even how to fully work Word Document. He probably had to save by going up to the File folder. Yeah. Probably not him.

I sat back down and stared long and hard at that screen. Une was not going to be pleased.

Okay. I typed in my final report, making sure she understood that it was all more speculation than hard evidence, and sent it out. I didn't wait for a report, just shut myself out of the Preventors' system. While I was at it, I sent a second message informing the woman of a weakness in her program. Finally, finally done, I turned off my computer and pushed away from it once again.

Zechs Merquise. Even though I hated the rat bastard, I had to admit that it didn't seem right. The guy was a prick, but he fucking worked for Une. Why would he toss that?

Zechs. Zechs! Of all people! I had a fucking grudge against him! There was no way I could be put on the case, even if I was in perfect health. I was definitely biased. I wouldn't be able to think straight. Hell. I already couldn't.

If he'd known... if he'd fucking known what was going on with Caribol, with Heero, with _everything_, why the fuck did he just send it a hidden folder and let the entire thing go? Did he know Heero was underground? Or did he think Heero had been defeated? If he'd thought the latter, did he figure that Heero's defeat made the man not worth any real effort?

Just thinking about the guy made me absolutely furious. I was ready to rip out my hair. Or his. Fucking pretty boy.

I stopped between the living room and kitchen and leaned heavily against the wall. Zechs Merquise. What if he'd known? He could have told me. He could have told _Une_. If he had, maybe I wouldn't have...

I squeezed my eyes shut. No. I wanted to put the blame on him, to say it was Zechs' fault that I shot the man I loved. That I had intended to kill him. But in reality, it was my blame to carry.

Hell. Heero would dislike me thinking like this.

I sank to the floor, right there where I stood. But it _was_ my fault. The information, even if we'd seen it before making that final bust, it wouldn't have changed anything. I still would have gone up to that roof. I still would have fought Heero. And in the end, when that opening arrived, I still would have jumped right in.

I'd had such a righteous fury. Such a gung-ho belief that what I'd been doing was right. Just like in the war – all the killing, the death, the carnage. I'd foolishly believed that I was saving children from becoming orphans. Stopping more kids from fighting and running on the streets, stealing, putting their lives on the line simply for a scrap of food. I'd truly believed that I was helping people.

"How many more lives," I moaned, "am I going to have to destroy before I learn?"

"I'll take care of you," a voice murmured, and I jumped up. It was not Heero.

As I turned, I saw a body run behind me. I ducked to the ground, twisted, pushed away, all in one short movement. The man didn't come after me, however; I caught a glimpse of a blue shirt before the man hopped out of Heero's kitchen window, shattering the thing into million pieces. The man was gone.

My heart beat twice its speed. The man had somehow gotten into the house – or had he been here the whole time? - and snuck up right behind me without my knowing. If the man had wanted to do something to me, he probably could have done it.

Shit. Shit.

My hand trembled when it pushed my bangs back, and my eyes caught on a little slip of paper and a balm holding it down.

For your hands.

The man had come in to leave a note and balm for my hands. I felt panic in my blood for the first time since the roof. "Shit."

This guy most definitely was not normal. I was in serious danger.

I struggled to get my mind under control again. My mind shifted and whirred with the effort. Phone. I needed to get to a phone. I had no fucking clue why the man had decided to talk to me, to come up behind me just to run away, but I couldn't take the time to worry about that yet. Not yet.

It was ridiculous how hyped on adrenaline I was. I was ready to rip apart Heero's table just to take one of its legs. Quick weapon. I changed the plan a little, backtracked and grabbed a lamp.

Lampshade gone and post in hand, I re-entered the kitchen and snatched up the phone. It didn't take long to get in touch with Une.

"Strike. I got your e-mail."

"Get me Heero. Please," I added.

The tenseness in my voice must have tipped her off, because she did exactly as I said without question or complaint. I scanned my eyes around the house and wished I had someone at my back. He'd gotten in, completely under my senses, under my radar. Even if I was ready for him now, the very fact that I needed to be on hyper-alert made me afraid.

"Duo?"

Heero was already panicked. I didn't know if it was because Une had said something extra to him or if it was because I wasn't quite in the habit of calling him at work.

"Yeah, uh, Heero? Your window's broken."

"What?" I heard a chair scooting across tile. "What happened? I'm coming back."

I didn't argue, and I think that more than anything got Heero moving.

"Yuy? What's happened?"

"I don't know. I'm going to the house. Stay here."

"Fuck no. I'm coming with you."

"You're recovering."

"So are you, asshole."

I listened to the repartee, all the while humming with tension and stress. Finally I couldn't take it anymore. "Could you just hurry? I'm a little tense here."

"Tell me what happened," Heero ordered.

"Can't. I need to focus."

Now the tension was coming to _me_ from _Heero's_ side of the line. "Duo. Basics?"

"You were right, and I'll never question you again. He was quiet, Heero. He was fucking _behind_ me, right behind me, and I didn't even feel it."

I heard absolutely nothing from Heero's side. Then, finally, "we'll be there in five. Maybe less."

Speeding. Possible accident. I didn't argue. "Just hurry."

"Wufei, get Une. Notify her that we have a perp outside my house."

"Again?" Wufei groused, but I knew he'd already be pulling out his phone.

"Duo, I need you to stay on the line."

"I'm going to speaker."

"Understood. Wufei, speaker."

"Gotcha. Une, there's a perp outside Yuy's house. We're backing Strike up. Out. She's going to kill me for that."

"Yeah. Go ahead, Duo."

I punched the phone onto speaker and set it aside. A part of me was trying to think like him. A guy who went after an ex-Gundam pilot, one who wrote psycho-dude love letters and broke into a house to leave some balm and inform said ex-Gundam pilot that he would 'take care' of him. I breathed deeply. My best guess? He wanted to see me. He wanted to get close to me, to let me _know_ he was close.

But did that mean he was gone for the day?

It was quiet outside, the birds twittering only from a fair distance. A car passed on the road, and then silence returned, broken only by the wind. I strained my ears, but I couldn't hear anything.

Then again, I hadn't heard anything when he'd arrived, either. I was in serious shit.

My eyes scanned everywhere, behind me, in front. I was concerned about leaving my post; I had nothing but a lamp post. Going up against a potentially armed enemy with nothing but a lamp post was bad enough, but this man was dangerous. I needed as even a ground as possible.

What did he want with me? What was he after? Why the fuck would he come in and then just _leave_? It made no sense. He's said he was coming to _save me_. Didn't that mean taking me away somewhere? Or... did he mean something more ominous?

Heero.

"Hey, you out there?" I called. Was he there? Was he listening? My guess said yes. If that was the case, then he was staying somewhere close enough to hear me, or at least somewhere where he could read my lips.

"If you're out there," I continued, "listen to me. I've seen enough killing, okay? I don't want any deaths. Not for me, not for anybody. Okay? Got it? No deaths." I wondered belatedly just what Heero and Wufei were making of this.

I didn't get a response, but I really wasn't expecting one. A random part of me wanted to say, 'except Merquise! Do what you want with him!' But I just might regret that after I saw the guy's rotting corpse. Maybe. I kept my mouth shut.

This was dangerous.

Then I heard a car pull up and felt a bastard mix of elation and terror. I turned to him, allowed my back to the kitchen window so that I could watch for Heero. No one went near the car. I watched as they both got out and closed their doors and proceeded to check out the area.

I didn't calm down until Heero finally said, "all clear," his voice crackling like thunder through the silent room, and I sagged down onto the couch. Heero and Wufei were there in less than another minute.

"Duo," Heero gasped, pacing toward me and holstering his weapon. He knelt in front of me and pulled me into his arms. "Thank God. You're okay."

"Yeah." The lamp post dropped from my fingers. When my arms wrapped around Heero, they clutched him tight around his shoulder blades. "Thanks for coming."

Wufei cleared his throat and looked around the room. "Looks like your house is going to need even more renovating."

"Shut up, Wufei," Heero growled, not bothering to move. "Are you all right?"

"Fine," Wufei piped up before I could speak.

It shocked a little laugh out of me. "Yeah. Just... freaked."

"You said he got behind you?" Wufei asked. "Without you noticing? How close?"

"Uh, I felt his breath on my neck?"

Heero shuddered.

"How could that be?" Wufei came to stand behind Heero, and with that Heero gave a hard sigh and released me from his hold, keeping one hand around me as he sat next to me on the couch. As he sat, he pulled his gun out with a quick motion, leaving it sitting idly on his lap. "We're Gundam pilots, supposed to be the best in the world. We took out Caliban's horde of cyborgs. Who the hell else is there to beat us?"

I shook my head. "You're asking the wrong person. He jumped out the window before I could get a good look at him. He was wearing a blue shirt. That's all I got for you, officers."

Wufei rolled his eyes, but Heero pointedly looked at my hand. Now that the immediate crisis was over, reaction was setting in, and my hand was shaking pretty badly. Wufei caught the look and cleared his throat. "Plan?"

Well, I sure as hell hadn't made one. "Nothing from my end," I sighed. "God, I think I'm getting old or something. My back hurts."

Heero shot me a concerned glance, and I realized that my back hurt so bad because I'd stressed the recovering muscles.

"Oops." I sent him a smile. "My bad?"

"Permanent damage?" he asked.

"No, I don't think so." I rolled a shoulder, testing. "No. Just sore."

"We should see the doctor," Heero started, but Wufei snorted.

"No, Yuy, we should not." But before Wufei could continue, his phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and winced.

"Ran out of time?" Heero smirked.

"This is _your_ fault, Yuy."

Heero just grinned.

"Commander."

I could hear Une's voice loud and clear over the line; Wufei had to pull the thing away from his ear. "I've waited an hour. Now, do you want to tell me just what the hell is going on over there? Why can't you boys go a week without getting in some sort of trouble?"

"We don't ask for it," I called.

"Maxwell!" Wufei just sighed and put the thing on speaker, officially giving up. Heero took the chance to grab the phone I'd left on the nightstand and ended the call. "What the hell is going on out there? I was in the middle of reading your final report and-"

"Wait, what?" Heero broke her off and stared at me. "It's finished?"

I looked away, back to the phone in Wufei's hand. "Yeah, I kinda didn't want it to go public. I wasn't exactly taking it seriously."

She growled; I could fucking hear it. "Didn't take _what_ seriously?"

I took a deep breath. "Well..."


	7. Human

Disclaimer: Gundam Wing, shockingly, horrifyingly, belongs to someone else.

* * *

Sub Rosa

Chapter Seven

Human

* * *

Une was interestingly silent over the phone.

Heero looked about ready to burst, too. Apparently he wanted to know just what the hell my final report said. I was definitely going to put that off for a while.

"So," she said finally, "you mean to tell me that you have a stalker?"

"Yeah. I thought that was kind of ridiculous, too."

"And yet," she continued, almost as if she hadn't heard me but for the fact that I heard the distinct sound of her biting her cheek, "he came up behind you without you gaining awareness of his proximity."

"Yeah, fancily put, that's pretty much it." I felt a bit better now that time had passed. Maybe it was giving her my report, keeping it as smartass as the report I'd sent through e-mail to her. Or maybe it was Heero's and Wufei's looks, their flabbergasted expressions as I cursed and bitched my way through the conventional methods of reporting. It had been classic to watch.

"No wonder she wants to kill you," Heero whispered into my ear, and I grinned a mega-watt smile his way.

"Will you save me?" I whispered back.

"I don't know. I might just leave you to your just desserts."

"Thanks so much," I muttered.

"Duo Maxwell, I _know_ you are taking this seriously right now."

Ooh. Scary. "Uh, yeah. I'd just been put in one of the most vulnerable positions in my life."

She huffed out a breath. "All right. We need to get you out of there."

"We can't just keep running," I told her. "We ran last time, and that didn't do us dick." No. In the end, that had almost ruined everything.

"And if you'd listen to me," she gritted out, "I would say that we need to get you out of the house, away from such an easy target. And I don't feel like having that place wholly redecorated again. You and Yuy and Chang will be sent out, and word will be sent to Winner and Barton."

I groaned. Great. And Trowa had just decided to _not_ hate my fucking guts. Back to square one with him, then.

"I'll talk to him," Heero promised, and I just rolled my eyes and let it drop.

"And where are we supposed to go?" I demanded. "Any place can be an easy target if you're good enough, and he is."

I could hear a faint tapping from over the speakers and imagined her bouncing her pen on her desk. "From what you say, he has no interest in hurting you."

"Uh, yeah. Yet. He seems like that 'believe-he's-in-love-with-me' type of psycho." I glanced at Heero then. "But I'm not positive about anyone else."

"Yes, I feel the same in that regard. That's why you need to go somewhere where he won't be able to harm just one of you. It will keep you away from him and will keep Yuy and Chang safe. Meanwhile, we'll be studying those notes you received. You have them all, I presume?"

"Of course." My mind raced. A place where he couldn't get just one?

"Space," Heero said with a nod. "Duo – your ship. Demon's Wing, right? It's ready to fly at anytime, correct?"

"Yes. Even better, apparently it just got an overhaul yesterday." Une's voice was noticeably sardonic. "We'll have you three back once we've gained an idea as to who's after you, Maxwell, since I know very well you three can't stand to not be in the middle of things."

"Thanks much, Commander Crazy Lady," I drawled.

"I'll also look into your report, Maxwell."

"Yeah." I cut a glance toward Heero. "Thanks for that."

Heero scowled at me. "And what did the report say?" His eyes turned to Wufei's phone.

Wufei huffed out a breath and clunked his phone down on the coffee table before taking a seat in the chair. I sent him a repentant grin.

"Maxwell informed you of the search, he can inform you of the results," Une said, her voice rather prim. I wasn't sure if I wanted to thank her or curse at her. "I would suggest you leave as soon as possible. Get out of there, preferably before we have more of Yuy's house to repair."

"Aye, aye." Wufei and Heero said their good-byes to her, as well. As soon as we were off the phone, Heero and I were up and packing. Wufei helped us, going to the bathroom and grabbing our toiletries – shampoo, shaving cream, toothpaste.

"Sorry about this," I called to him, but his reply was just "shut up, Maxwell." I figured he didn't have too much of a problem with it.

Once done at our place, we headed over to Wufei's and grabbed _his_ toiletries while he packed a quick bag. Then we were racing to my Wing.

"Do you think he'll have messed with Maxwell's ship?" Wufei asked, turning more to Heero than to me. I perversely answered his question.

"If he wants to get me on his good side – if he believes he loves me – he wouldn't do anything to hurt me. Which means leaving Demon's Wing in one piece."

Wufei didn't immediately respond to that one.

"Duo. Can you give us a more by-blow account of what happened in the house? And _what_ the final report said?"

It was with a wary glance toward Heero that I began. "Well, I had just finished the report..." I hissed and thought back. "I don't think I ever said who it was out loud, but... just to double-check..." I pulled out Heero's cell phone and rang in Une.

"Why are you still here?" Une demanded as soon as she answered.

"Uh, because we didn't want bad breath?" I answered. All in all, it had only been twenty minutes, and that because of the drive. We were already less than five minutes from the port, too.

"Fine. What is it you want?"

"You might want to inform _him_, too. I don't believe I ever said his name, but the freak might have been watching over my damn shoulder for all I know."

Une was silent. "I don't believe I fully understood the implications, even though I knew it was catastrophic. You're right; I'll contact Preventor Wind immediately."

Preventor Wind, huh? Guess he wasn't on _her_ list of favorites, either. I sneered. "Or you could just leave him," I mused.

"Thank you, Strike," she noted dryly. "I'll inform him of your opinion, as well."

"Go ahead," I said cheerfully. Heero's eyes were wide; Wufei gripped the wheel tightly. I, sitting in the back of the car, my arms draped over both the back seats, just grinned widely. "Gotta go, Lady Commando."

"Get out of here, Strike," she ordered and hung up.

"Merquise?" Wufei gasped, sending a look to me through the rearview mirror. "Are you serious?"

"It's only a theory," I told him. "The other two didn't fit. But there's no hard evidence, and we don't even know that he did something particularly wrong." Didn't mean I didn't want to punch him, though. But I didn't really need this new predicament to want to hurt the bastard.

"Merquise," Heero murmured, and I could tell he was thinking it over. He wordlessly accepted the phone back from me, and I scanned around for a sign of a car I'd noticed before. There were three, but they didn't seem to give a damn about us. I kept my eyes on them, anyway. "He _is_ easily able to work computers."

"But why?" Wufei demanded, and they were off on their Preventor tangent, talking about stuff in the past I couldn't possibly reference, and I just kept scanning and left them to it. My opinion wasn't exactly unbiased. Personally, I just wanted an excuse to kick his ass.

It was half-way through some discussion of a mission on some odd murder case involving hairnets that I realized that there were only two bedrooms in my ship. And I wasn't being a prick anymore. And Heero and I were... involved?

Which meant the sensible solution was to have the two of us share a room.

I almost forgot which cars I was watching in the ensuing panic attack. I glanced at them, memorizing their features once more, and then let the worry overwhelm me momentarily.

You know, somehow I just hadn't even thought about it. I knew there were two rooms in my ship. I knew there were three of us. But my brain apparently hadn't made the next leap, that two people would be sharing a room. But now it was right fucking there, right in front of my face, and I couldn't believe my mind hadn't wrapped itself around this very simple idea.

I was dead.

Heero had been very plain about this – not when there were other problems to deal with. We would have sex only when there was nothing else on our minds, no big worries to deal with. And being out on my ship in order to evade some insanely strong stalker definitely qualified as a problem we needed to deal with. It also qualified as a worry.

Which meant no sex.

I was so absolutely dead.

Heero and I would be on-board the ship with Wufei in his own private room, thick walls separating us, and I would be trapped in the exact same bed with Heero, unable to fully avoid his presence, for an unknowable length of time. I was about to enter hell.

"We're here," Wufei announced, and I cursed myself for my lack of diligence.

"No one followed us here," Heero murmured, but he didn't have to say the rest – that my stalker had had plenty of time to arrive here while we were packing up. We stopped by my ship and pulled our things out of the car. Heero and Wufei took everything inside to secure my ship while I made certain the port around my ship was good and empty. Heero had initially balked at that, but I was better than either of them at running, and he had let it go when I promised not to fight alone.

It seemed our minor squabble had been unnecessary. There was no one in the port.

I traced my way back to my ship. As soon as I was inside, Wufei told me the coast was clear, and I sent the both of them to sit in the cockpit. And I double-checked the place for myself.

When I went into the cockpit appeased, they were buckled down and waiting. Heero was sitting in the co-pilot's seat.

His face had an almost belligerent expression on it, daring me to say a word. I struggled for quite a while, trying to _not_ argue with him about it. I lost.

"Up."

He was actually surprised by my reaction, but he crossed his arms and legs and got as comfortable as physically possible. "No."

Oh. Fucking A. "Heero, _up_."

"I told you I would accept your curse," Heero said, rather reflectively, I think. "So why should I?"

I took a deep breath. Part of it, of course, was male pride – the principle of the thing, I believe some might say. But I remembered very distinctly my first, my most primal reason. Because standing next to me was a death wish.

Of course, being my... partner? Boyfriend? Fuck it. Being with me in some sort of relationship was pretty much a lot worse than that. Right?

I was stiff as a board when I finally sat in my seat. "Fine. But if you die, I'll never forgive you."

I booted up Wing and double-checked her. I was wholly unsurprised to find that Une had already plotted my course out of the port, headed to a classified destination and knew without doubt that if someone looked into that classified folder, they'd find a whole lot of nothing.

"Duo." Heero's voice was very quiet. Somber. I turned to look at him, surprised. The groans of the launcher could be heard making its way toward my Wing.

"What is it, Heero?"

It was _not fair_ to be that close to those cobalt eyes and know without a doubt that I wouldn't get to see what they looked like during sex. It brought a flash memory of pain back to my gut, and I suddenly remembered the last time I'd been on-board my ship with him – thinking we wouldn't ever be together. Thinking that having him near was hell. Back when I'd believed he and Wufei were more than just a team. More than just partners at work.

"I'm not going to die in this seat."

It was so off-base a statement from what I was thinking that it took me a moment to understand just where Heero was coming from. I turned away from him then, not knowing whether to roll my eyes or scream. The launcher latched to my ship.

"Stop being so dramatic," I told him finally, punching the okay for launch. And thinking that he had put an interesting descriptor in there – _in this seat_. "Get ready for launch."

We all leaned our heads back.

"Then what?" he asked. "Why won't you let me sit here?"

I gritted my teeth; Wing jumped slightly as the launcher started the compression sequence. "You're there, aren't you?"

Wufei huffed, but I couldn't be sure if it was out of humor or frustration. The whir got too loud to continue conversation, and I ran my fingers over the controls, keeping my Wing straight and on-course while she jerked and bucked, and finally we were launched up into the sky.

Fifteen minutes later, we were successfully on a path to L3 – I had no idea why I'd decided to go there, maybe perverse pleasure, or maybe masochism, since the only person I knew from there wasn't particularly thrilled with my existence – and I was able to turn on my music.

Of course, Heero, in his fucking co-pilot's seat, turned it right back off. "Duo. Why don't you like me sitting here?"

"I'll go get some food," Wufei said, and quickly escaped.

I glared at his back, but he didn't look around. Smart.

"Duo. I'm not letting you run away from this one." He unbuckled himself, almost as if to prove the point that he was ready to stop me if I made a run for it. Like I could escape my fucking ship.

I stared at my vidscreen and cleared my throat. Shit. It was like I was hard-wired. And Heero didn't have to try to make me hard. Not with a predatory look like that on his face. "Uh. I already told you."

"Duo." Frustrated now. I very carefully didn't look back to him. "You told me that people had died around you, yes. And that you expected those around you to die. But I'd told you I'd break that curse of yours, so why? After all this time, do you still not trust me? I can understand, I suppose, what with my-"

Agh, below the belt! "No, no, dammit, that's not it! It's not..." Well, my plan had been to shut him up, and I had succeeded. Now all I had to do was complete the act and put my foot in my mouth. "It has nothing to do with you." I caught Heero's dangerous look and quickly fixed that to, "I mean, it has nothing to do with that. I trust you."

"Then what?" He stood. I, who had yet to unbuckle, was stuck looking up at him. "What the hell has you so scared about me, about this particular seat?"

I played my carp imitation for a little while. "It's... more that... look." I unbuckled myself and stood in front of him, making him scoot back a step. At least I couldn't feel his body heat anymore. "I worked next to Solo. I was practically his right-hand man, though we didn't have any terms for that sort of shit. And what happened to him? He croaked. I stayed at the Church for a while. I was cared for by Father Maxwell and Sister Helen. What happened to them? They croaked. Everybody close to me croaks. Frankly, I'm amazed you guys are even still standing. But maybe it's because I broke off from you all in time. Now that you're-"

"Dammit, Duo."

Not fair. Heero had completely ignored my silent plea for space and grabbed me up in his arms. Again. How many times was this man going to hug me?

And he was very warm.

The sexual tug was, oddly enough, killed at that exact thought, when I remembered just how _warm_ his blood had been on my hands. I may trust him, but I didn't trust myself.

"Duo, you can't possibly take on a strain like that." I jolted a bit; how had he known? But then I mentally kicked myself. Oh yeah. Conversation. In the middle of. God, where was my head? "Something like that isn't your fault. It was war. Everyone was dying. But _you_ lived. Isn't that something to be thankful for?"

Hell. I gave up and wrapped my arms around him, making certain they were above his stomach. "My head says that, but..."

"No matter what, I'll make sure no one dies in that chair."

"Same," I snapped. "By making sure no one sits there at all."

Heero pulled me back and stared me down. "Duo. I won't die."

Liar. Everyone dies. It's only a matter of when. My mouth opened to say just that, but the words stuck inside my throat. What the hell was wrong with me? One second I'm in a conversation, and the next I'm hot and bothered like a prepubescent teenager. And then suddenly I'm remembering my Moment of Horror. And now I'm looking straight up into Heero's eyes and seeing them both as they were, concerned, bright and bold, and how they had been, dead and cold and lifeless.

I shivered.

"Duo?" Heero's hands came up to rub my arms automatically; I swear the man had mother hen tendencies. Then his eyes brightened. "Oh." His eyes sparked some emotion of pain for an instant, maybe recalling his own memory of that time.

"Yeah," I muttered.

"We're... never going to get past this, are we?"

I cringed from the sorrow in his voice. "Aren't you the one who said we definitely will make it, no matter what?"

But I could see the doubt in Heero's face as plain as day, and it terrified me.


	8. Anesthesia Pulling Teeth

Disclaimer: Gundam Wing, shockingly, horrifyingly, belongs to someone else.

* * *

Sub Rosa

Chapter Eight

(Anesthesia) Pulling Teeth

* * *

It was the weirdest feeling, really. My heart was beating really fast. But despite the hummingbird sound of my heartbeats, it felt heavy, like every beat made it gain a pound of weight.

Everything in me was telling me to _move_, to move forward and grab Heero and demand just what the hell he thought he was doing, looking at me like we wouldn't make it. Like our relationship was over. Like _we_ were over.

And then I realized just how fucking selfish I was being.

I had given him this look how many times? I had made him feel this gut-clenching fear _how many times_? And he'd always just picked me up, carried me through like it was no big deal. He'd done it so many times I'd begun to lose sight of just how fucking _hard_ it was.

So I snatched his hands and pulled them into mine and watched Heero's eyes widen in surprise. "Shut up with that shit, Yuy," I ordered. My fingers curled around his and tugged; he was forced to step into my space. I leaned my head back just that bit more – lucky, tall-ass bastard – and glared up into those beautiful eyes. "I love you, asshole. Despite how fucked up I am, despite how much I've messed things up..." I kind of petered out there, not knowing exactly why I was trying to force Heero to stay with me when I was definitely the problem.

_Fucking hell, just say it!_

"And I know I'm being selfish and I know it's all my fault, but I don't care! Don't do this to me, Yuy! I need you!"

I think we both stared at each other then like I'd just proclaimed myself a woman.

"Duo." Heero was gaping fairly openly now. "What did you say?"

"Scratch that last part," I muttered, glancing off to the side.

"No," he countered simply, and leaned down, capturing my lips. Ack. And now my mind was spiraling south. My eyes closed as my body responded. "Thank you," he whispered, his breath hot on my lips, and I was done. My hands reached up of their own accord, catching themselves in his hair and tugging him down.

It was as molten as the ones before it, as electric and white-hot as always. And Heero's hands, when they reached up to curve my spine forward, were strong and hard, yet so soft and gentle it made me shudder.

But he broke it off long before I was done and stepped back just a bit, just enough to give me the message that he was done. His eyes were smiling.

"I'm sorry I worried you. I won't give you up. Not for anything."

"Uh-huh." I cocked an eyebrow and let his arms slide away, ignoring the chill it left. He wasn't giving me that look anymore. It was better than before. I would take that. "You make sure you remember that, dammit."

"Hmm. Care to repeat parts of that little speech?"

"No way in hell," I groused.

"Not even just three words?" he pressed.

"I love you?" I turned to the controls and turned on my Disney playlist, shooting him a look. He was rolling his eyes.

"Two of those are right," he teased.

"Hm, I don't remember saying anything else with two of those three words in any sort of understandable structure – at least not in just three words." 'The Bear Necessities' started playing, and I turned away from the console again. "Is Wufei eating my entire stock of food?"

"You know him. Can't keep his hands out of a good ration bar." Heero grimaced. "God, that's right. I forgot that ration bars were practically all you had on-board."

"I didn't!" Wufei suddenly called, and I blushed. There was no way in hell we were being that loud, right? I'd specifically gotten a thick-walled ship in preparation for my job!

"Shut up, Wufei! We're not done here." Heero grinned down at me. "Where were we?"

"No, I pretty much think we were done." I nodded. "Yup. Definitely done. Nothing else to talk about."

I moved to go around him, but Heero gripped my upper arm before I could escape. "No, I think there's one more thing." The serious tone made me turn back to him. "You are not being selfish. This is not your fault."

I gaped at him again.

"Do you understand me, Duo?" He shook me a little. "It's not selfish to want to be with someone you care about. And you can't keep taking all the blame; I have a good share to take."

"But _you_ got shot," I argued, and realized with a pang of pain that we were traveling down the same familiar path as always.

We turned away from each other at the same time. A small, building headache began to pulse beneath my temple. "Sorry," I murmured. "That wasn't what you wanted to talk about." Shit; we really were kind of stuck on that event, weren't we?

Hell. That wasn't fair, either. _I_ was the one who couldn't get over the fact that I'd almost killed the man I love.

"Maxwell!" Wufei shouted, and Heero and I turned like we'd been shot. "Which room is this for?"

I frowned; I had no idea what the hell he was talking about. One glance at Heero had me grinning apologetically. Wufei had given me an escape, whether he'd meant to or not. Like hell I was going to waste it.

* * *

Apparently what Wufei had spotted were my paints, lined up in the guest room. His duffel bag sat next to the bed. When I explained to him how I'd planned to bring the colors back to my Wing, he offered to help. We'd hardly managed to pick some of the buckets up that Heero came in and wordlessly grabbed the last two.

And that would be how we came to be redrawing my sky in the galley that afternoon and into the evening.

"So," I asked, our last bit of conversation having run its course, "have you ever wondered why there's a galley and a cockpit, but there's also a deck and enemy pirates? We mixed the sea and the sky with space. What's with that?"

Wufei chuckled dryly. "Only you would think of that, Maxwell."

"Maybe they'd run out of words?" Heero said, mockingly serious. He didn't seem to be too upset about my running out on our conversation. Which meant he was planning something.

"They could have just made some up. Who was going to argue?"

"Make up a word?" Wufei seemed almost disgusted with the idea. "We can't very well borrow from another language – most have been lost to time and technology. That leave compounding or affixing, Maxwell."

I blinked. "You just hurt my brain, Wufei."

The man just sighed. He was putting blue paint on the last wall, his hand competently sweeping up and down with the roller. I was working on the clouds, a sponge in my hands, and Heero, who had proven to have a bit of a knack for it, was painting in a butterfly. The floor was still undone, so only the furthest portion from the cockpit was still the picture of a sky, but it would have to wait for when we worked in zero-g – which took a bit of maneuvering.

"Maxwell," Wufei said suddenly, "did that man just say he had street savoire faire?"

I listened and chuckled. "Yup. Don't you know your Disney songs?"

He just gave me a look.

"Right. Sorry." I shrugged. "You and Heero both need to catch up on that stuff. I love it; there's almost always a happy ending."

That made the both of them pause, and I wondered if they were dissecting me again. It made me shuffle my feet. I returned to the bucket of white paint and dipped my sponge in it, then twisted it clean. My hands were starting to look like a ghost's.

"Maxwell, Yuy told me..." He hesitated for a moment, and I felt a distinct pang. The uh-oh feeling. "He told me you'd come up here to find yourself?"

I glared at Heero, but the bastard was carefully not meeting my gaze. "Yeah," I said slowly, "that's right."

"And he said he'd tried to help."

"Help?" I glared harder.

"Yuy told me he'd listed a few of your traits. How kind you are, perhaps? Or how stubborn?"

I vaguely remembered that, yes. I thought back. "He'd said I was 'generous, kind-hearted and dependable.' Ah, he also said I was stubborn and righteous and a worry-wart."

"I didn't say worry-wart," Heero said with a grin. His butterfly was growing antennae out of its head. And it was upside down. "I said 'a worrier.' There's a difference."

"Not really, Yuy," Wufei said, but he was smiling, too.

I found it odd; had Heero told Wufei verbatim what he'd said, or had the both of them come with those two personality traits all on their own?

"I also said he likes to take blame," Heero continued. I snarled.

"Well, that's certainly true. And he fears for others much more than he does himself."

"Mm." Heero made a vague sound of agreement. "To the point of endangering himself for them."

"Constantly," Wufei affirmed.

"Uh, guys? I'm right here." And I was blushing fit to burst.

"Reckless, too," Wufei murmured, and I ground my teeth together.

"Oh, definitely. What else, do you think?"

Wufei hummed. "Well, we can't forget artistic."

"Mm." Heero dotted the butterfly's wings. "With the ability to make words sing."

I scrunched up my face. "I'm not the one talking like a poet – or ignoring someone like a fucking statue!" My cloud became a little too solid then as I smashed the sponge against the wall. I cursed and went about repairing the mistake.

Heero moved across the room to start on another little project on the high end of the opposite wall. "He has a lot of confidence," Heero murmured, completely ignoring my hiss, "but not when it comes to himself."

"That's true," Wufei agreed.

"Hello?" I snapped. "Knock it off!"

"The point, Maxwell," Wufei said on an exaggerated sigh, "is that we know you a lot more than you know yourself."

"Bullshit. That's physically impossible." I finished fixing up the cloud and moved on to start a new one before I fucked it up again. "No one can no me better than myself because they haven't lived my life."

"Granted, I can't trace my way back through your memories to arrive at where or why the trait began," Wufei said, "but I can certainly tell you the traits I see in you. And I don't mean the ones you pretend to have. For instance, I realize now that you have a habit of showing anger and frustration when you are confused, and you try to change the subject when you are embarrassed."

I blushed. "So what?"

Heero, who'd been silent during Wufei's mini-shpiel, decided it was time for him to get in on the act. "Don't forget how much he smiles when he's upset about something."

"How could we possibly forget that?" Wufei asked dryly. He placed his roller back into his bucket of paint. "Maxwell, we will never be able to fully remember ourselves. We don't have the ability to look through every memory we own. And really, only the bad things come from the past. Happiness doesn't last long enough to have convoluted origins. And personality is more than just a sorrowful past."

I blinked. "What are you, a shrink?"

"No," he answered dryly. "I doubt I have the patience for it."

I doubted it, too. "So how do you have the patience to deal with me?"

"Practice," he answered easily, and I glared at him.

Heero chuckled. "You opened that door yourself, Duo."

"Shut up, Heero," I grumbled, and blushed. It felt... decidedly odd. Homey. Comfy. I felt like I was surrounded by warmth on all side, like I'd been stuck in the snow and about to faint from hypothermia when suddenly I was surrounded by people and fire. Like I'd been given a thousand warm fuzzies.

Was this what it was like to have a loving family?

* * *

We finished the sky and moved on to the meadow in the hall, which had also taken an interesting amount of damage. Heero freaking drew ladybugs, for crying out loud. I made fun of him for it, but seriously... they looked kind of cool. I'd only drawn some grass and a sky and I'd attempted a deer but it had looked rather mangled and I'd just painted over it. Of course, when I told him that, the bastard had to paint one in. And when I exclaimed over it, he drew its baby and then the father and an aunt, too. We were absolutely starving by then, and Wufei went out, ditching his continued post as sky-painter for the more delicious task of cooking.

I got up to help – hey, I could at least make a salad or something – but Heero caught my arm and dragged me back down. "wait," he murmured, and pointed at a part of the wall. There weren't any bugs or even flowers there, and I cocked an eyebrow at him. "Isn't this where that war poem was?"

"Huh?" I looked back down; sure enough, my four-line poem _had_ been there. I slanted a look back to him. "And how the hell did you remember that?"

"It... bothered me."

"That it was here?" I looked again at that part of the wall. Heero _must_ have left it blank, but had it been so before? The poems had gone up after I'd finished decorating the ship, and I'd [retty much grabbed whatever space popped out at me first."Why?"

"I was bothered that it existed at all."

I thought about the lines. _If only, if only / we knew what was holy; / keep fighting, keep fighting, / all people die lonely._ Yeah. I guess he would have a problem with that.

It only took a moment for me to consider the obvious option; it might be difficult for me, but it would be easier for Heero. "Maybe it shouldn't, then."

Heero was oddly stunned by my words. "What?"

"It was destroyed. Maybe it should stay that way."

Heero seemed absolutely torn. "It can't, Duo." On his face sat a grimace. "It has to come back. It was always there. It's... a part of you. A part I hadn't been able to..."He actually raised a fist to his face and covered his mouth with it.

"You can't save 'em all, Hasselhoff," I told him.

He cocked me a look. "What the hell's a Hasselhoff?"

"Hell if I know, but people say it all the time. Look, Heero, the point I'm making is that you can't constantly pick up all my shattered little pieces. It's the same with me. I can't..." I raked a hand through my hair, but it caught in my braid and I growled at it. "I couldn't help you."

He looked confused. "Help me with what?"

Oh, for the love of god. "Never mind. I'm gonna go help with dinner."

I haven't even managed to turn before Heero was grabbing my wrist and turning me around. "No, you're not. You're explaining that last comment. I won't let it go, Duo. Answer me. What the hell did you mean?"

Dammit, now his hands were on my shoulders. "It's nothing. No big deal. Look, don't you think we've spewed our guts enough for one day? Let's give our bowels a break."

"Hell, no. You're tossing up all the information you've got."

He said it with such a serious face that I burst out laughing. "Good follow-through, Yuy," I managed, and found I had to hold my stomach for fear of a cramp.

"I thought so, too." I could hear the smile on his face, even if I was too busy laughing to see it. "Seriously, Duo. Tell me. What do I need help with?"

"Your jokes," I replied immediately. "It was far too pun-ny."

"Like that wasn't?" he remarked dryly. His hands slid to my elbows. "Please?"

It helped me sober up, hearing the perfect soldier say that word. It wasn't fair to hear the strongest man alive beg me for something. Who the hell could say no to that? "Look, don't even think about making fun of me."

"I won't."

His eyes were so freaking sincere it would probably make a bystander nauseous. I was supremely thankful Wufei was otherwise entertained. "So I left after the war. And you went to Preventors."

He nodded, so far following me.

"And then you hooked up with Wufei, and then with Quatre and Trowa."

"Yes." His eyebrows furrowed. Duo, what does this have to do with me needing help?"

"That's just it. You _don't_ anymore. I remember, during the war, how you treated other people like extremely viral cases of leprosy. If it weren't for me, you'd have constantly been on a bench glaring at the world. Now it's different. I came back and _you_ were different. And me? I'm still the same guy I always was. Three years and you and the others got yourselves turned around, and once again I'm the loser playing catch-up."

Heero just stared at me.

I blew out a long breath and shrugged helplessly. "God, I'm a mess. I'm not trying to whine or anything, I'm tired of constantly doing that."

"You don't whine," Hero interjected firmly.

"The hell I don't. Look, that is one hundred percent not the point. The _point_ is that I wasn't here to help you out. Couldn't help. Quatre took care of it, apparently by cursing at you – wish I'd thought of it. Dammit, no. Don't look at me like that." I couldn't take those sad eyes. "So you'd gotten through without me. You don't need to turn around and fix all my ridiculously numerous problems. It's... depressing." I backtracked when he looked vaguely horrified. Strike the word 'depressing' from my category with 'suicide,' 'gunshot' and 'poison.' "I mean it makes me feel like I'm not pulling my weight. Which I'm not. But I'll start," I promised. "Okay?"

He blinked. "Are you done?"

I took a deep breath, thought about it. "Yeah. I think so."

"Good." And then he leaned down and kissed me full on the lips. "I love you, Duo Maxwell. And we're going to talk about this. Every last part of it. I swear, even though you may not be ready to hear it all. Got it?"

My eyes widened. Wouldn't want to hear it all? I hardly felt my head bob up once.

"Good. But first we need to get into the galley. It smells like Wufei's got the food almost done."

Wouldn't want to hear it all? The words sounded vaguely ominous to me. I tried to ignore that stupid little imp in my mind, the one that kept trying to tell me that things were crashing down. After all, when Heero's hands slid off my elbows, one latched onto my hand and pulled me into the galley. His grip was firm and strong, but it was smooth, too. I could trust him not to let go. After all, the bastard had pulled me to him to begin with.

But... what wouldn't I want to hear?


	9. The Wait

Disclaimer: Gundam Wing, shockingly, horrifyingly, belongs to someone else.

* * *

Sub Rosa

Chapter Nine

The Wait

* * *

We had a nice dinner, and just to cap off everything, in my worry and concern I completely forgot about the fact that I only had two rooms.

Last time, Heero and Wufei had shared and I'd kept the place on zero-g. But now that Heero and I were technically a couple...

I stood in front of that door in horror, vaguely aware of Wufei's back retreating into his room, and I thought I might just very well want to find that stalker on-board my ship.

"Duo? You coming?"

My head turned without my permission. I think my thoughts were rather easy to read, because Heero turned away and cleared his throat.

"We need to talk."

My heart skipped a beat. I firmly told it to shut the fuck up. Heero didn't mean it like that. But somehow my mind launched back to that paralyzing moment when Heero had doubted how long we'd continue and... my heart skipped a beat again.

"Duo?"

He was inside the room now. I had yet to venture in there, see what was left. It, I think, had survived the blast, so everything in there might still be-

"Oh, fuck."

I raced in there, but as soon as I slid through, I knew it was too late. Heero was looking at the far wall like he'd found the charred remains of a defenseless baby. I sighed and gave it up for lost, slumping slowly up next to him. "Hi, Heero."

He turned to me, too shocked to be upset, too confused to by furious. "Duo, what the hell is this?"

I urned and took a chance to look at the poem. This one had been put up with less strength as the rest. I'd just come back from one of Une's missions, having fallen into a pit of self-deprecation so big it almost got me killed. I wasn't so morbid as to write with my own blood, but with the way my hands had shook and my vision had blurred, it looked like I just might have. This one actually had its title stamped above it: Tsubasa. From what I'd gathered from some old Japanese shows I'd found, Tsubasa meant wings. I cleared my throat and quickly scanned the words.

-

The ancient wings of glorious summer

Now rage in discontent.

But wherefore art thy distant murmur

Of great days once misspent?

-

And why hath all the maids and maidens

Left lost to that contact?

For dining hath once ruined the hearts

The men had once intact.

-

So come to us, O crying youth

Who wishes for the morn

And join the older and the group

Who wish they were not born.

-

Believe in wings that scream in pain,

The tips concealed in blood

And cry on me, for I'm your shield,

Your hope, your life, your love.

-

The paint had dripped down the wall, testimony to how little control I'd had over my limbs at that point in the game. I'd fallen unconscious there in my room for a while, and only the ship's wailing woke me up, informing me that I was supposed to be docking. I'd hardly managed to call for emergency assistance before passing out against, this time in the cockpit.

Exactly how much of that was I supposed to tell Heero?

"Duo, I want an answer. What..." His eyes trailed seemingly unwillingly back. "What the hell is this?"

"A poem?" I tried, but his eyes turned away from it just long enough to give me a glare. Apparently he didn't appreciate the joke. "Look, it isn't blood or anything."

"It's not?" Heero seemed to ingest that, and I saw some tension in his shoulders ease. What the hell? I may have been depressed, but I wasn't a fucking lunatic. What did he think I did, stabbed myself and leaked out the poem onto the walls? (1)

"No, Heero, it's not. It's the same paint as everywhere else."

He looked at it for a moment longer, and then the tension eased a lot more. "You're right," he sighed. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "But it's different. Duo, the paint's _everywhere_."

"trust me, I'm well aware. But every time I tried to paint over the splotches, my hands would freeze. I guess my body or subconscious or something wants to keep it there. Maybe as a reminder. I dunno."

"A reminder? Of what?"

"Of not to try it again?" At Heero's questioning look, I rolled my eyes. "I'm sure Une was informed, but maybe she didn't tell any of you. I took one of her mission, as usual. Routine. Did it a million times. There be the weapons dealers, there be the bad guy engineers, there be me. This one was supposed to be even easier than usual – just get some incriminating evidence. A few snapshots, maybe an illegal gun or three. Find some gundanium. Something. But I was stupid and got careless and took a few slugs." Heero looked about five seconds from freaking out. "No, no, look, okay, I was dumb. I didn't move fast enough when I should have, didn't push myself forward, and I got caught in the middle of their base. Look, it wasn't that bad, okay? I got out, got to my ship, sent the info to Une, and she sent her men in. She got them all despite my fuck-up; apparently she'd been waiting with troops to enter, made up an excuse about an anonymous phone call – don't bitch about the procedure-"

"Duo, what happened to _you_?"

His hands were outstretched, both in the air, not touching anything. One was wavering in front of the poem. The other was reaching for me. I huffed and walked forward until he could grab my hand. "Nothing. I took some bullets, got aboard Wing and headed out." Heero hissed. "Une had no idea I was injured, and I wasn't keen on telling her I'd done something as newbie as spaced out. I thought I could make it to a clinic on a nearby colony, but... I didn't." Heero's eyes widened. "I mean I did! I just... this has nothing to do with the poem," I muttered.

"Duo," he said slowly, "are you telling me that... that you wrote this poem while you were...?" He apparently couldn't even find the words to finish off that question. He looked back at the poem, horrified beyond words. "_How_?"

"Yeah, I don't have any idea how I managed it," I admitted. "I just suddenly found myself grabbing the spare paint can by the bed and suddenly I was writing. Couldn't even tell what I was putting up there, had no idea if it was legible. It just sort of... happened." I shrugged, but Heero wasn't about to let it go.

"How many bullets? Where?"

He looked about ready to drag my clothes of, and even with this very brutal topic of conversation, I was certain that would lead to paths yet untread. So I told him. "Six. One leg, two stomach – they have a thing for my stomach – two arm, one chest."

"_Chest_?"

"I was very, very careless."

"You could have died! What the hell were you thinking?!"

I ignored the anger because I very much understood it. "Probably not much. I don't really remember what I was thinking, or even what I was doing at the time. I remember my instincts screaming at me to _move_, but I didn't. I think... I think I might have been having a slightly minor suicidal moment."

"_Minor_?" Heero repeated incredulously, looking back at the poem. "That doesn't look _minor_, Duo."

"Yes, thank you for noting my outrageous mistake, I hadn't noticed it before this very second. Any more you want to uncover and lay bare, potentially humiliate me with? I very much wish to be enlightened, O ye who does no wrong." I waited for Heero to stumble before continuing. "I know I fucked up, Yuy. I truly am man enough to admit that."

"I know," Heero murmured.

"I can even manage to wipe my own ass most days," I continued. "And then, when I'm really agile, I can even flush the toilet. But you know, I think the biggest accomplishment of my life is not having faceplanted tripping on nothing. Pretty proud of myself for that one."

Heero sighed. "I apologize."

"Apology accepted," I said briskly, and glanced nervously at the bed. "So what were the things you originally wanted to talk about? You know, before you saw my psycho poem up there."

"First." He held up a finger, then pointed it at the poem. "What the hell is this thing talking about?"

I bit my lip. "It took me about the entirety of the time after I wrote it for me to even begin to understand. It's something about how you shouldn't regret the happy times and say that you wasted that time because if you were happy it wasn't wasted. Or something like that."

Heero reread it. "You mean the glorious summer raging in discontent is that 'happy time?'"

The words sounded odd falling from Heero's lips. "Yeah, that's right. And the women lost their contact with it, and men ruined their hearts in excess of it. I think."

Heero nodded. "Makes sense." And then he pointed again. "And the second stanza?"

I shrugged. "It's still kind of up in the air. So, uh, Heero? The other stuff you were going to talk about?"

"'O crying youth?'" he quoted. "Would that be you?"

"No, it's somebody else. I'm talking to someone, but I don't think it's someone I know. Heero, dammit, just drop the subject of that poem for five minutes. Why do we 'need to talk?'"

My tone must have finally cut through whatever psycho information-sniffing mood he was in, because he turned to me with his eyes a little wide and his mouth slightly open. Apparently he had never caught the fact that he'd said something potentially scary to me.

"Duo, I meant we needed to talk about what you'd said to me earlier today. Nothing particularly bad," he soothed. He came over and stood in front of me.

"You said there might be things I don't want to hear."

"Yes. Although what I think I said was that you may not be _ready_ to hear it."

"That doesn't sound loads better."

He sighed. "I swear, Duo, it is." And then he attempted to usher me over to the bed. I immediately balked. "Duo?"

"I'm comfortable standing." I eyed the bed like one might a rabid wolverine.

I swear to God, the bastard had the audacity to blink owlishly at me. I could see it when it clicked; his eyes widened even more than usual and his mouth turned into a tiny little 'o.' And then the dick fucking smiled at me. Very warmly. Commence sizzle.

"Duo, we are kind of in the middle of something. Stalker?"

My teeth were clamped together. "That's why I don't want to lay down."

His mouth turned into an 'o' again. "All right." He sighed again, raked a hand through his hair. Flashed his eyes back to that damn poem. "All right," he repeated. "we'll stand. You said four important things back then."

He'd listed them?

"And we're not finished talking about this little number." He pointed to _Tsubasa_.

"Yeah, yeah," I groused.

"One: that you had never helped me find the civilian in me. Two: that you have numerous problems. While that may or may not be true, it's not like you're the only one Duo. Three: hell yes, I have to help you with each one of those numerous problems. And four: you _are_ pulling your weight. A little bit too much, actually."

I made noises of dissent throughout his little mini-shpiel, but he shushed me every single time by switching on his Glare O' Doom.

"The first one is irritating because I already _told_ you that you helped me; you made me follow you everywhere. It's as you said. I wouldn't have even acknowledged the existence of anyone if it hadn't been for you. You helped me learn to reach out, to speak. I had my emotions, but you're the one who got me _talking_ about them. Watching you, I wondered if it wasn't possible that you... that Odin Low may have been right. Quatre called me on my inhibitions, yes, and he did so rather, uh, memorably."

I snickered.

"Yes. Ha ha. But it was you who even got me _that_ far. And when I thought about what Quatre said – about me being withdrawn-"

"Withdrawn? I thought there was something about sticks and asses involved-"

"_A-ny-way_, when Quatre brought it up, it reminded me of why you might have left all of us, and I thought that maybe it was because of what Quatre said. And if we were ever going to find you, the only way I could possibly try to make you come back was to be able to reach out, and that meant breaking down the barrier. Of course there were other reasons – for my friends, for myself. But it was mostly for you. Did you forget? I've loved you for a very, very long time now."

And I had absolutely nothing to say to that.

"Number two," he began, but I held up a hand to stop him.

"Heero, is this all going to try to refute me by saying you love me?"

"That is a major part of it, yes," he told me. He had that half-smirk on his face, the one that was just waiting for me to give it a chance to pop wide open. I very much loved and yet very much hated that damn smirk.

"Then don't. It's... distracting." I tried very hard not to look at the bed. I swear I did.

He fucking chuckled at me. "Duo, you have a one-track mind."

"I've been doing my damnedest _not_ to think about it all day!" More than that, but best not to give so much away.

His eyes took on a suspicious gleam, and suddenly I felt like he was going to pounce on me. Tiny, miniature alarm bells went off in my head. "You want to have sex with me that badly?"

I thought about what those words meant to me. Sex was that one man back when I was a child, the one who grabbed my hair and yanked my head back so that my throat was to the air, and I'd thought he'd slice me, but he pulled down his zipper and shoved his cock into my mouth. _That_ was sex. Or the kids on the streets weeping, screaming, begging, crawling into the alley, blood trailing from their thighs, two credits in their hands and death in their eyes. _That_ was sex. I didn't want _that_.

"No."

Heero seemed confused. "You don't?"

I shook my head emphatically, so hard I almost got a headache. "No. I don't want to have _sex_. I want to..." And here I blushed so hard I couldn't finish for anything. I looked down at the floor. I'd painted it black, too, and had painted a moon, but I'd disliked the way it looked and had covered it with the bed. The rest of the floor was pure black. There were no stars. And nowhere in my room was there a sun or asteroids or even a nebula. Mostly because I didn't have that much skill, but because I'd always been fascinated by the idea of having tiny little pinpricks of light that may hold countless untold secrets.

"You want to what, Duo?"

I shook my head and said nothing.

I heard him rake his hand through his hair again and tried to imagine just how messy his hair was now. "Duo, please tell me?"

The bastard must have fucking learned that I couldn't say no to that goddamn word. I snarled and just snapped, "wrong word."

The bastard was silent again, apparently soaking it in and letting it simmer for a few seconds. Finally he said, "The second one, we all have problems, and we all have a lot of problems, and I could list mine but it might take a while. The third one kind of pissed me off because I love you and not only do I _want_ to help you with your problems, I _have_ to, because watching you suffer isn't something I can stand to do. And the fourth and last one was also damned annoying because you've pulled your weight so damn hard you've almost killed yourself far too many times for me to count. Now." He took a deep breath, and then I heard his footsteps clomp over to me. His fingers entered my vision, touched my chin, lifted it up and forced me to look into those deep near-midnight eyes of his. "Do you want to make love with me?"

I blushed so hard I think I burned. My shoulders hunched up in immediate defense.

"Stop figuring me out," I whispered, hardly loud enough to hear.

But Heero was superhuman and even if he hadn't heard every word I'd said, he could simply read my lips and figure it out that way. "No."

He leaned down until our lips brushed. "I love you," he murmured, and he traced his lips over mine. "Very much. More than you can imagine, possibly."

"I have a good imagination," I managed. My entire body was on point, more than ready to express its interest.

Heero chuckled, a tiny, breathy little thing, and grabbed me into his arms. The force of his kiss nearly knocked me back; it was power and hunger and control. _This_ was the man I'd seen on the battlefield, a man so intense his very aura pushed you back. It was incredible to feel his arms around me, tugging at my braid, pulling my waist against his until I could feel that he was just as excited as I was. My brain just fucking fogged.

_This_ was the psycho bastard who conquered the Zero system. _This_ was the lunatic who decided to cliff dive minus a parachute. And this was also the annoying little fucker who decided that I was his own personal jigsaw puzzle. The bastard who constantly forgot the meaning of the word 'no.' The schizo who held a gun in my face and then saved my sorry ass. The man I'd shot, twice in the war and once almost a month ago. The man with emotions deeper than... than... fuck it. Deeper than a fucking black hole. And he was the man I loved, and more, even greater, even more unbelievable than all of this – he was the man who loved me in return.

And that was why I stepped away.

Those unyielding arms yielded to me the moment I decided to step away, even as his eyes looked at me in confusion. The body that could bend steel let me go. "Duo?"

I took a deep breath. "One, I understand I might have helped you at first, and maybe in your head, but I would have absolutely loved to watch the changes you underwent, and I could kick myself for having let go of the opportunity. Two, whatever problems you have, I love them, too, because I'm so madly in love with you I should probably have my bedroom padded. Three, that very reasoning of yours, that watching me hurt hurts you, is exactly why I absolutely abhor having all these goddamn weaknesses and why getting you involved hurts _me_. And fourthly, I'll keep pulling more than enough of my weight as long as it keeps you from getting hurt by _my_ problems, because apparently I hurt you enough.

And you said you wanted to wait until there were no other distractions and nothing to worry about. Let's just get to sleep, okay? I'll take the floor."

"Duo, firstly, that's fucking unreasonable, your bed's big enough for both of us and you know damn well we'll suffer, sleeping in this same room together. And secondly," he murmured, cupping my cheek, "I see no other distractions."

"God, Heero, please, this is hard enough." I placed my hand on his and closed my eyes. Every single molecule in my body seemed to be about ready to revolt and to hell with my one, small, insignificant little speck of a muscle that argued against it. Heero hadn't offered until he'd realized how much I wanted it. Feeling how fucking deep and strong Heero's emotions were, even for that one instant, it felt like he would do anything I asked, even if my mouth never voiced the plea.

"Duo, I think that's the first time you've said please to me."

I took a very, very deep breath. "Sleep time."

Heero hesitated, and I almost kicked him in the nuts to keep him quiet, but finally he just silently went to the bed and flipped back the sheets.

"Everything bolted down?" I asked him, and when he confirmed I opened the door and went to the cockpit. Heero didn't say anything, but I figured he'd be fucking timing me or something, so I just turned on zero-g and went back to the room. A locked cabinet held an extra blanket and pillow and I made myself comfortable in it.

"You know, Duo," Heero said as I rolled myself into a floating cocoon, "we really will be aggravated all night."

Aggravated. A nice way to put it. "Yeah. But at least now we won't be in physical pain."

Apparently he had nothing to say to that.

I was very well aware of the throbbing pain of non-completion, but I thought it rather uncouth to take a quick restroom break for it. It was quiet from Heero's end of the room; I was drifting aimlessly on the left end of the room as he slept on the right.

"Duo."

"Mn." I yawned and wondered if I would manage to get fucking _any_ sleep.

"I'll make sure there are no distractions," he vowed, and I shivered at the conviction in his tone. "And then I'll make you writhe beneath me."

I groaned and buried my face in the pillow – an interesting feat in zero-g. Fucking _hell_. The answer to that stupid question? _None_. I wouldn't be getting sleep for a long, long time.

Like a year.

Or however long it took to make this stalker bastard disappear. I don't think I'd ever wanted someone dead so much in my fucking life.

* * *

(1) Yep. That be a reference to Sunhawk. Don't take offense, Sunhawk – I love every single thing you write. I just don't think Duo's quite that extreme. (See _Ion Series_ for details.)


	10. Fuel

Disclaimer: Gundam Wing, shockingly, horrifyingly, belongs to someone else.

* * *

Sub Rosa

Chapter Ten

Fuel

* * *

It was a very, very long night.

How many times did I regret my decision to wait? After all, I'd kind of been bothered by my libido for the past... Jesus, pretty much since Heero returned from the hospital. It was absolutely ridiculous for _me_ to be the one to say no.

But I could remember, very vividly, the gleam in Heero's eyes when he'd told me we would wait for the perfect moment. And you know, despite how freaking girly it was, thinking that he wanted that moment to be perfect kind of made me feel not only loved but cherished. You know?

So I didn't want Heero's desire to be put on a back shelf just because I was a little too... hyper, shall we say?

That said, it was still a very, very long night.

I don't know if Heero got much sleep, but I know I didn't. I think I had small, short little bursts of sleep, but they were always shallow and quickly gone.

It was far into what was probably morning on Earth when Heero spoke. "This isn't working."

"You noticed?" I was still floating in the middle of the room, so I couldn't pull myself up. The most I could do was turn in his direction. "So what do you want to do instead?"

Heero was ready for that question. "What about Zechs Merquise? You told us you'd explain."

I blinked. Oh, yeah. That. "I'd honestly forgotten all about the asstard."

"Ass 'tard?" Heero repeated, sounding amused in the darkness of the room, sounding it out. "Inventive."

"Thank you. He was the one who'd sent the file, as far as I could tell."

Heero frowned. "How? Why? Zechs is supposed to be out on a mission."

Mission. I rolled my eyes, then stopped, disturbed.

'Zechs?'

We were on a first name basis with the asscracker?

Oh, hell no.

I huffed. "Look, I don't know. The details are beyond me. But I very well know that he was the one who fit the best."

"Why didn't you wait for me? Do it with me?"

I thought of his fingers on the keyboard and wished there was something hard nearby I could bash my head against. "For one thing, it was my job, thanks, and informing you doesn't mean it's suddenly yours, too, and for another, I kept getting distracted and – don't you dare laugh at me, Yuy!"

The bastard was fucking chortling.

I took my pillow and sailed it at him. He caught it, of course, and just kept right on laughing at me.

"Yeah, yuck it up," I grumbled. "It hasn't been a pain to deal with. Not at all."

He cleared his throat, and I thought I saw the jerk sit up a little straighter to wipe his eyes. I glared at him, I really did, but I couldn't help my lips from twitching. It was absolutely incredible to watch the perfect soldier wipe tears of laughter from his eyes.

I wondered when it would stop hitting me – when it would start seeming to be normal. I almost hoped it wouldn't. I didn't ever want to take this for granted.

"I really am sorry about that, Duo." His eyes glinted maliciously. "But _you_ were the one to say no last night. And if you feel that strongly about it, then of course we'll wait."

I groaned. He was evil. Pure evil.

He laughed at me again.

"Come on," he said, sitting up. "We're up, so we might as well cook. Poor Wufei's been trapped in that galley too many times."

I agreed, so the two of us got up and changed out of our clothes via the bathroom – things were far too tense for us to chance undressing with one another in the room – and headed to the kitchen to cook some breakfast.

* * *

When breakfast was ready and Wufei officially woken up, Heero told Wufei what I'd told him about Zechs, and then I compounded on the information for the both of them. We went back out and finished the meadow, then went in to do the cockpit, which had been like my room. I hesitated there, not wanting to bring back the reasons why I'd painted it that way.

Heero and Wufei looked at me a little strangely when I stopped them from picking up the black paint and said, "not those."

"Your cockpit was space," Wufei said, as if actually believing I might have forgotten.

"Yeah, I know. But I don't think I want that again."

They exchanged a significant glance with one another. "And why is that?" Wufei asked. His tone was light, but his eyes were sharp.

I shrugged, remembering that old belief from back when I'd first realized just how much I'd hid. That I was as empty as space. "Well, maybe we can do space," I mused. "But do you guys know how to draw nebulas and asteroids and shit?"

They exchanged that look again. "Why?" Heero pressed.

"Because I like nebulas," I said defensively. I looked down at the colors of paint I owned. Some random part of me had bought tiny little things of pastels, thinking I might try to draw flowers. We'd used the colors to do just that, but there was plenty left and suddenly I wanted nebulas and crazy shit all over those walls in the cockpit.

"Maxwell, your psyche is a very convoluted and complex structure, and it apparently comes out visually. Now explain just what it is that you want to see in that cockpit, and do it now." Wufei had his hands on his hips, scaring the living hell out of me with his look of determination.

"Uh..." I shuffled my feet, shrugged. "Well, I remember thinking some stuff that neither of you wants to hear, and it was what, I dunno, inspired me? Yeah. It inspired me to paint the cockpit the way I did."

Heero frowned, seemingly ready to dig into my bowels again, but thankfully Wufei just grabbed the paints I'd been looking at and huffed, "glad you want it changed," and left. I thought I caught him giving Heero one last parting Look before he left.

Heero seemed to take a second, maybe taking in what Wufei had said. I was ready to bet my life savings that Wufei had been speaking mostly to Heero when he's said that.

"He's right," Heero sighed. I was surprised; I was ready to get my ass chewed out. "I am glad you don't think like that anymore, because if it's something I don't want to hear, it's something I don't want you thinking. But..." And here he raked that hand through his hair again. "Dammit, I want to know."

"You wanna know _everything_," I informed him, rolling my eyes.

"Everything about you," he agreed, so quickly it was like he'd practiced the damn line. It left me floundering for a second.

"Right. Well, I just thought that I was my masks and nothing else. That there was the Jester and Shinigami and... I didn't really know that there was someone else at all."

I could see a flash of pain on Heero's face, but this one seemed tinged with something else. It made me realize that Heero had, at least at one point, felt the exact same horror. Without the war, what was I? _Who_ was I? A soldier didn't need to be human; hell, being human could equal death.

With a deep breath, I continued. "So I was afraid there _wasn't_ something underneath. I mean, I'd had something other than my battle persona; Shinigami wasn't a permanent fixture, after all. It's like I shuffled two, but I wondered if I was like Mr. Potato Head or something and no matter how many different lips I had, none of them were really _mine_. If that makes any sense. I'd thought the Jester was the civilian me, but he wasn't. So _was_ there a civilian me?"

Heero's lips thinned, but he kept silent, waiting for me to finish.

"It was a completely random thought; I'd just left Quatre with Trowa and returned to my ship, and I'd gone back into space and..." I hesitated, unsure if I wanted Heero to hear the next part. "Uh, and I looked out and I guess I questioned myself."

"Duo, say it."

"I can't! It sounds ridiculous!" I groaned and pulled my bangs back in frustration. "It sounds absolutely stupid. Like poetry, but it somehow went horribly, horribly wrong."

"I don't care." Heero bent down and picked up the black paint cans, of which I had bought several. "It has something to do with emptiness, right? Or darkness?" At my rather dumbfounded look, he lightly swung a can and hit me on the hip. "I understand you, Duo."

His eyes were calm, but that piercing quality hadn't diminished in the slightest. It made me duck my head and finally suck it up and _answer_. "Yeah. I looked out and I wondered if there was nothing in me – that the blackness of space was... metaphoric."

"Duo." Heero stepped forward, into my personal space. I was forced to bring my head up or bump it on his chin. "When you made that conclusion, you forgot about something."

"Nebulas?" I guessed.

It made his lips quirk. "No, idiot. _We're_ here. In space. All living things are in space."

"Yeah, thanks for the inferiority complex." At his warning glare, I conceded with a, "yeah. I know."

"Good." He pecked me on the lips before I quite knew what the hell he was doing, and then he was out the door.

I touched my lips and felt the fire rage right back up again. "You bastard!"

I could hear the asshole's chuckle as it bounced down the hall.

* * *

Nebulas and asteroids and stars and planets. Every one was put up with painstaking care, with Heero doing most of the nebulas. It was something I hadn't ever known about him – his ability to draw. There was a moment when all I did was stare over at him, at the look of concentration on his face. But of course I got quite uncomfortable and had to return to my little dots.

Then was dinner, then bedtime. It was just as uncomfortable as the night before, if not more so. We'd walked in knowing we wouldn't do it, and that made the flame burn even more painfully. I huffed and sailed over to my pillow and blanket, ignoring Heero's cocked eyebrow.

I listened as he got in bed, as well, and tried very hard not to imagine him lying down in that way he had, the one that told you he'd be awake the moment you stepped into the room. I had no idea why _that_ made me uncomfortable. I did my best to roll over and winced. Ouch.

Heero leaned up and looked over at me, but he didn't say anything. I'm sure he knew the cause of my... distress.

"Shut up and go to sleep," I muttered, and he just snorted and lay back down.

* * *

"Hey, guys, it's almost time to land." I popped my head into the galley the next morning and pointed behind me. "The notice is about to go off; we might as well get into position."

Wufei tossed his drink in the chute and pushed off. "All right, then."

Heero nodded and moved to follow, giving me an assessing look. I looked away, wholly uncomfortable admitting in the light of day – so to speak – that I'd hissed in pain while in zero-g.

"We'll only be there for a short while," I informed the two of them. "I just need to get more gas, and then we'll get a quick check-up. After that, we can go straight back out."

"I want to get some more food," Wufei said.

"And there are a few things I need, as well," Heero murmured as we sailed into the cockpit. "It shouldn't take too long."

"All right. I'll stay on-board and oversee the check-up. Bring back the supplies and lock then up, then come on back to the cockpit." I sat down and hooked the belts around me. I turned off the alarm just two minutes before it would go off. "Once you're both back, we'll sail right back out. Any preferences?"

I looked around, but they both shook their heads in a negative and I turned back around. "Great! I get to pick again." I chewed my lip. Like I had any clue where to go. Well, worse to worse, I would just close my eyes and play pin the tail on the donkey with my finger and a grid. "I'll send a message to Une, ask her to send another to Trowa and Quatre. Anything you want to say?"

"We're fine and be careful," Wufei said immediately.

"And that, for now," Heero added, "don't trust Merquise."

I shot him a glance from the corner of my eye. The colony docking bay was in sight now, a small block in the colony's side. My hands instinctively slipped down the console. I cleared my throat and focused on the screen. "Gotcha."

Even as my fingers flittered around and I called in my ship's numbers to command, Heero reached up and clicked on my battle music. Apparently I wasn't going to be breaking that habit again. Disturbed's "Enough" banged onto the speakers.

"Maxwell, where do you _find_ all this old music?" Wufei asked; I imagined him cocking his head.

I decided it would be best not to inform him that most of it had been acquired illegally. "If you search around long enough, usually you can find what you're looking for."

Heero rolled his eyes and shushed Wufei before he could ask something else. I tuned them out and bounced my head to the beat. Heero hardly bothered to watch the screens as they popped up, knowing I could handle them. Instead he turned that gaze of his on me and entertained himself with seeing how uncomfortable he could make me – again.

* * *

"They're out getting supplies right now." I hat to shout a bit to be heard; my Demon's Wing was getting fuel and a nice tune-up, to boot. It was a little noisy.

"When will they be back?" Une demanded. Her frown informed me that she wasn't pleased that they'd left the ship.

"I dunno." I flipped a bang from my face and huffed at the sound of a whirring gear. Heero and Wufei had left as soon as the search of the dock had turned up clear, which had only been a few minutes ago. Still, I felt oddly exposed in my cockpit all alone. It made me want to laugh – wasn't I more used to being alone in this room than surrounded? How quickly habits changed.

"You can't get separated," she snapped. Okay. So her tone was telling me more now than even her frown.

"And why?" I asked. "Just because you haven't found my secret admirer?"

The woman looked about ready to reach across the line and smack me. "You said this man was able to come up behind you, whisper into your ear, and jump out of a window, all without you being able to even identify the color of the man's hair. How about _not_ underestimating him?"

"Yeah, said that way, it kind of does make me seem extremely special." A thump and answering grind informed me that the fuel line had been cut from the ship.

"Yes. It does. How far from the ship are they?" She looked away from the screen for a second. Someone's voice called in; she broke them off with a snappish, "later!"

"I dunno," I answered. "Let me just check their GPS tracking devices."

"Why thank you, Strike." Une rolled her eyes.

"Look, since we're getting nowhere, why don't you send a message to Qat and Trowa?"

"I am not a messenger."

"I know." I grinned. "But do it, anyway."

She downright scowled at me. "Keep it brief."

"Fine, fine. Ruin all my fun." I started before she could say anything. "Wufei says that we're fine and to be careful. Heero warns not to trust Zechs for now – hey, don't look at me like that, _he_ said it, not me... for once – and I want to let them know I'm sorry, and that we'll take care of this."

Une's eyes went slightly blank for a moment as she processed the information. I knew she wouldn't forget a word. "Anything else?"

"Uh, try to think of it as a honeymoon. Only slightly more dangerous." I was too tense to lean back in my seat. "And that I'm really, really sorry."

Une rolled her eyes. "Should I mention that you groveled on the floor of your ship?"

"If it'll help." I sighed heavily. Trowa's face was very vivid in my mind. "Though I know it won't."

Une pulled out a sheet of paper and wrote her signature on it. "Fine. I don't wish to become involved in any melodrama. Or at least any more than you've already saddled me with. I'll simply send the damn message and they can do with it what they wish. Is that acceptable?"

"More than. Thank you."

"Then I'm signing off. You aren't my only headache, unfortunately." She stood. "Take care, Strike. Tell the others the same sentiments."

"I'll be sure to. And we'll all be sure to disregard it."

"Speak for yourself, Maxwell." Wufei walked into the cockpit. It made me jump; I hadn't been paying attention to the external sensors. I cursed myself for it as I flipped Wufei the bird.

"Suck-up."

"Shut it," he said amicably. "We will prepare for take-off, then, Commander, if your business is over."

"It is. Keep Strike in line, please."

"If I can" were his parting words. I scowled at him.

"I bought food and put it away. Where's Yuy?"

"Still out," I answered and pulled up a grid. With eyes closed, I pointed to it. "Where am I pointing?"

Wufei leaned in. "Uh, Colony G12. Why are you doing this?"

"Colony G12 it is." I started charting the course.

"You can't be serious," he muttered, but in the end he simply dropped it and turned away. "I'm going to unpack more thoroughly, since Yuy is still taking care of his business. Call me in when he returns."

"Aye aye." I didn't even look up.

Wufei huffed and exited.

* * *

Heero entered the cockpit about ten minutes later, and after I called Wufei in, Une's useful little emergency pass got my Wing hooked right back up and launched. Heero sat next to me, once again turning on my music. I distinctly heard Wufei sigh, but Heero smirked. He even flipped through the songs, looking at each title, pulling up lyrics.

"I thought you were supposed to help me?" I asked when we were back up in the vacuum of space.

"You can handle it." The bastard just kept right on flipping through.

"Smartass," I muttered.

"You're both smartasses," Wufei piped up from behind.

"So are you," Heero shot back.

"But I at least retain a sense of intelligence when doing so."

"Only a sense of it?"

I grinned, suddenly completely at ease. Somehow their bantering had become simply that to me – friendly banter. I unbuckled myself, and Heero and Wufei did the same, though Heero didn't move from his seat. I took the chance to lean down and kiss him. He looked at me in surprise.

"I love you," I informed him randomly, suddenly inspired to do so.

"Um, good?" He pushed up and grabbed me up in a deeper kiss. "I love you, too." But then he sat right back down and began flipping through the lyrics again. "Now go do something. I'm busy."

I laughed. "Asshole." Wufei had already left, most likely to retreat to the galley while we attempted to give him a nosebleed. "You can be so annoying."

"It's one of my many charms."

The grin turned wolfish. "And you're suddenly being sarcastic, too. Any particular reason?"

He turned an equally wolfish grin on me. "Wait tonight and find out."

I scowled at him. "Below the belt, Yuy."

His eyes dilated interestingly. "Yeah. I know."

* * *

Bad. Bad Heero. *grins* Enjoy!


	11. Poor Twisted Me

Disclaimer: Gundam Wing, shockingly, horrifyingly, belongs to someone else.

* * *

Sub Rosa

Chapter Eleven

Poor Twisted Me

* * *

Wait for tonight?

The bastard was trying to kill me. I could swear it.

But wasn't it wonderful? I mean, excluding the fact that I just thought the word 'wonderful' and actually placed it in a sentence... it really was. Wonderful, I mean. Heero and I weren't arguing. We weren't awkward around one another. We weren't thinking about death and guns and poison.

I sailed into our room, needing a private moment. Heero was still skulking through my lyric files, and Wufei was doing something in the galley. I was free to think alone in our room.

Our room. Why was I thinking of it like that? I always had this room to myself. In two days, had I really changed my opinion on this room so much?

I moved over to the poem on the side wall, still miraculously all right despite how totaled my ship had been. Had Heero seen it? The proof that I had been... what? On the verge of suicide?

I sat on my haunches and glared at the poem. "I'm not suicidal... am I? Well, I did try to kill myself," I muttered. But _why_ was I suicidal? What had been the reason? Not for my attempt with strychnine. For all the time before that? Why had I questioned my existence so thoroughly? Somehow, I didn't think that I'd felt that way when I'd left on my little solo journey. Or had I? Had I not even realized it?

I stood back up, but I couldn't quite move away yet. When had I started losing myself so much? The Jester may not have been me, but that didn't mean that I wasn't allowed to laugh or joke like the Jester had. Hadn't Heero turned into the Perfect Soldier once, right before my eyes? When things got tough, he could switch over in a heartbeat. Why couldn't I?

Was it because Heero had found out who he really was? When one knows their true self, honestly knows them, wouldn't that make it easier to pretend to be someone else? Staying to to oneself in one's mind...

Really, didn't it all boil down to the fact that I'd really not had any idea just what the hell I'd been doing? I'd gone out into space to find something I didn't know existed or not.

I took a deep breath. Maybe what I really needed to admit... was that all the suffering I'd gone through those three years had been entirely my own fault.

Yeah. That was right, wasn't it? All those feelings of sorrow, of loneliness, of not belonging anywhere... being alone, the only one who could possibly affect my emotions was me. Only I could make myself feel something. There were no outside sources saying or doing things that might have affected me. And even if there were, wasn't I the one who decided whether I would be happy or sad?

So... what? Did that mean... that I'd _made_ myself depressed?

I snorted. No way. I was the one that made myself into the sissy that I'd become? I don't even _like_ the me that thinks about death as a viable option. So why would I make myself into that?

I pushed off from the wall and let myself float. But in the end, wasn't that exactly what it boiled into? Granted, there were things that made me believe I should leave, that helped me think that I really was alone and unwanted in the world – and it's not like the words "we don't want you here" were new to a street rat – but in the end, hadn't _I_ made myself feel that way? There _was_ no one saying they didn't want me around. Only I ever said that to myself – _no one wants you. Everyone's made it just fine on their own, without you._ I was obsessed with these thoughts. But I'd only really spoken with Quatre over the years, and he'd been nothing but supportive. Worried, concerned, but always, always supportive.

I bumped into the opposite wall. It was no wonder Trowa had hated me.

I was right, wasn't I? Somehow, I've been causing all these problems for myself. Not just the bounty hunter thing. Not just the poison thing. Even the depression thing? Granted, I didn't cause _everything_. I didn't _make_ Heero go undercover without our knowing. I didn't _make_ Trowa hate me. But maybe it all could have been avoided, or handled better...

Then I stopped myself. I was thinking about this all wrong again. That wasn't right. The paths I didn't take couldn't be called either better or worse. I wouldn't be able to know, no matter what. So those unknown paths may as well have never existed at all.

Right now is what I needed to be worried about. Things that were happening at this moment. And right now, Heero and I were together. Trowa was slowly starting to accept my existence. Wufei and Quatre were ready and waiting to help me out at a moment's notice.

What I needed to do was to protect the relationship I wanted to have with Heero. I wanted to... to stay with everyone. I didn't want everything to fall apart again. I needed to buck up, become stronger. Didn't they – whoever they were – always say that life was about change? Maybe instead of trying to find out who I was or what characteristics I had, I should have always been searching for something I _wanted_ to have, or someone I _wanted_ to be. Maybe it was time I stopped mourning what I might have lost in the past and grab onto what I want for the future.

And what I wanted was Heero.

I reached out and pushed myself from the wall, then rebounded and touched the floor. My hand was on the panel to open the door when a hand clapped over my mouth.

I was pulled back, pushed to the middle of the room, where I floated in someone's arms. It wasn't Heero, and it most certainly wasn't Wufei.

Someone got aboard the ship.

I grabbed the hand around my mouth and yanked a finger back, snapping it. The man didn't let go, though he hissed quietly in pain. "Don't be afraid," he hushed, and I spasmed in shock. "I won't hurt you."

It was him.

How? How the hell did he get on-board? How'd he even get to L3? Even if he miraculously got here before us, he shouldn't have even know where we were headed. So how the hell had he managed to track us down and get here before we rushed back into space?

And that stopped me for another very split second. We were trapped on Wing with him.

I kicked back, trying to free myself, get my mouth uncovered, but he held on tight.

"Do you not recognize my voice? Shh, shh, that's all right. We haven't been formally introduced, after all. Just calm down. Calm down."

His voice was slick, soft. Like he was trying to calm a wild animal. I grabbed his arm, but I didn't have any leverage in the middle of the air. I cursed underneath his hand and tried to twist away.

"Stop, stop. I'll have to punish you if you keep this up!"

Instead of listening, I grabbed his wrist with both arms and twisted as hard as I possibly could. My mouth was finally freed. "Enemy attack!" I snapped out, shouting the vital piece of information. This time is was my assailant who cursed.

"Sleep for now, love. I'll take care of everything."

I kicked him, but he grabbed my wrist and tucked me straight back into his arms, and as soon as he had me the plunge of a needle caught in my upper arm. "Drugs!" I shouted, and managed to chop at the syringe, cutting it. Liquid splashed through the air and floated beside me.

"Duo!" Heero's voice shouted into the room just before the door opened. Heero stood outlined in the door jamb, his gun aimed straight ahead. Whoever my baddie was, he grabbed the needle in my arm and pulled it out. I grabbed his hand before he could use the needle as a weapon. "Let him go!"

"Absolutely not. I'll never hand him over to any of you, traitors to his love."

I twisted my neck, trying to see him. His arms were lithe, tanned. He wore a silk shirt; I could easily feel the slide of it against me. I twisted his wrist, heard the snap. He let go of the needle.

"Stop, love," he whispered, and grabbed me right back into his arms. The next second, we fell to the floor. Heero and him landed evenly, but his arm around my chest held me about an inch or two off the ground. He grunted at the effort of holding me.

"Let him go. He obviously doesn't want to be with you." Heero edged closer, slowly coming into the room.

"Fool." The man's good arm moved behind him. I touched my toes to the ground and grappled for a footing. The sound of a gun clicked next to my ear. "I will never give him up. Not to anyone."

I took what leverage I had and pulled. Thank god; it was enough. Mr. Crazy flipped over my back. A gunshot sounded, then two more in quick, rapid succession, and then a whirring gear could be heard.

I looked up in shock. Heero's eyes met mine just before the door slid seamlessly closed.

"Fuck!" I shouted. There was a safety mechanism; an automatic precaution placed in every ship these days. The door would react to a breach in the keypad and lock shut. After that, the keypad wouldn't open the door; only someone from the inside could open the damn door, and only by pressing the button by the door. Just in case there was something dangerous outside the room.

But the 'something dangerous' was inside! With me!

"Duo!" Heero shouted, and another gunshot informed me that Heero was trying to reverse what my lunatic did; the keypad on this side of the door was shooting sparks.

"Fuck!" I said again, and turned to face my admirer. He was fairly old, probably around thirty. Tanned skin, hawk-shaped eyes, hazel irises. Thin lips. Dark, dark brown hair. Lithe. "What the hell is your problem?!" I hissed. He wasn't cradling his right hand, despite the fact that both his first finger and wrist were broken.

I watched as he took out another syringe, but this one was placed into his right wrist. He released half of it into the inured area. "I understand why you're afraid, love. You've learned not to trust anyone. But I'm here to save you. You don't need to fear me." He took out the syringe, moved it to his first finger and repeated the earlier process, emptying the syringe's contents. "My name is Troit." (1)

"Troit?" I echoed. Weird name. Easy to find in databases if it was real. "What the hell are you doing on my ship?"

Troit stretched out his right hand and curled his fingers. As I watched him twist his wrist, I felt my eyes widen ridiculously. Maybe I'd imagined it, but I hadn't seen any pain in Troit's face. Had he... just healed himself? Then I mentally shook myself. Most likely he'd just numbed himself from the pain.

"I came to save you," he said seriously.

How long would it take me to reach the button next to the keypad? It would definitely take a while, and this guy was fast. Turning my back on him would be stupid. Especially until I learned what he was capable of and what all he wanted.

More, I could hear Heero and Wufei working to take down the door from the outside. I would stall a little longer. "Save me from what? I don't need saving – I can take care of myself perfectly well on my own."

"But you don't have to anymore, love. I'm here. I can save you from them." He nodded toward the door. "I can save you from everyone. You will never feel hurt again."

It took a deep breath to control my reactions. "I don't want to be saved from them."

"Yes." He strode forward, seemingly confident that I wouldn't hurt him. Where he found the confidence for such a thought, I would never know. "You want to take care of it all yourself. But you don't need to. Don't you see? I'm here now."

And the bastard opened his arms wide. Like he was waiting for me to jump into them.

I eyed his gun. It still sat, now loose, in the man's left hand. Though he didn't have it aimed at me, I knew he'd be ready to shoot me in an instant. And the whine of metal told me Heero was trying to open the door with force. The freak. "Maybe you don't understand. I _want_ to be with Heero and Wufei."

He didn't bother to answer that one. He just turned his eyes to the door. "I know you believe what you say. That's why I must save you."

"Really. You don't say." When he stepped forward again, I took a careful step back. I had no idea what this man wanted, but I was certain what he wanted entailed catching me. He was quiet, able to be in a room with me without my noticing. Strong. Fast.

"You still need to be punished," the man said. Like he'd actually forgotten those bullshit words from earlier. "And you will attempt to fight me. You must sleep."

I bared my teeth and crouched. The sharp groaning got a bit louder; Heero was doing his best to get to me. I had to take this guy's gun before Heero got in. Before he could turn it on all of us. Talking any more would be a waste of time.

I slipped to the side and hopped onto the bed. Using the springs, I leaped to my left, charging for the man. He easily hopped back and avoided the attack, but instead of pulling his gun on me, he flipped it back and holstered it in his pants, clicking the safety back on.

That's right. He wouldn't hurt me.

With minimal effort I pushed off of my landing and leaped forward again, going for the man's jacket, where I'd seen him pull out his syringe.

Troit spun away from me and reached into that jacket of his. I didn't wait to see what he would pull out. All I could do was kick out and follow after him when he dodged once more.

"I want nothing to do with you, freak," I told him, trying to get him to _fight_ me. "You're just some loser who gets off on messing with braided guys." I chased after him, punching for all I was worth. The man was like a freaking piece of paper, always moving in a way I didn't expect. "I'll stick with Heero."

The man frowned, but this time he didn't say anything in response. He just finished pulling out that syringe of his and held it up. He even fucking looked away to double-check the fucking thing. "I'll get you to sleep," he murmured, catching those hazel eyes on mine. "And when you wake up, you will understand."

Son of a bitch but this man was annoying. He wasn't the only psycho I'd had to deal with, but he was definitely the first who turned his lunacy on me.

With the gravity back on, I was able to drop to the floor and roll my leg out, trying to trip. He jumped back, pushed off of the bed, and rebounded straight toward me. I had to roll back to avoid him.

When I'd wanted him to fight me, I hadn't wanted him to attack with drugs. I should have fucking known.

I had to push off of the floor again as he followed me. Then all I could do was dodge to the side, then again. His hand was moving fast, twisting around, his hand like a snake's head, the syringe constantly ready to plunge as soon as it met flesh. I followed the hand with my eyes, but I couldn't keep its movements in my head long enough to figure out where the hand would go next. I couldn't take the chance on grabbing it and being wrong.

"You're good," I panted.

"For you," he whispered, and the response took me aback. He attacked immediately, sensing more than seeing the sudden weakness. I barely managed to dodge.

"Consider yourself dumped, pal," I managed. He'd already gotten a little bit of drug into my system, and I could feel it slowing down my body by that tiniest degree. And all the adrenaline pumping through my body couldn't change the fact that my elevated heartbeat was pushing the drug through my system even faster. I cursed.

"Not yet," Troit said. "Not yet. I'll show you how strong I am – how I can protect you."

"With drugs?" I panted, but he was already moving.

I had to duck to the side to avoid his attack, since the wall was too close to my back, and I slid around and kicked at him. He hopped back, then straight back forward again. It was like a dance, one where neither partner was giving up dominance. Neither of us got a hit in, and the groaning of the door got louder and louder until it turned into a squeal.

"I'm running out of time," Troit murmured. Then, impossibly, his speed picked up.

And I lost sight of him.

"I'm sorry," he murmured, and his breath was on my ear. I spasmed away, but he gripped my arm and a familiar plunge made me gasp. The shock of pain told me that he'd specifically aimed for a nerve, and pain lanced up my arm. It slowed me just long enough for him to successfully squeeze in the drug.

"Fuck!" I snapped, then shouted, "I've been drugged!" to the others trying to get inside.

I very distinctly heard a panicked curse.

I managed to twist myself away and pulled out the needle, brandishing it as a weapon. But now Troit seemed more than content to wait. As if his entire purpose had been to knock me unconscious. So I wouldn't interfere in the upcoming fight? I cursed again. Fuck. He'd wanted this.

I could almost _feel_ the drug in my system, slowing me down, cutting off my adrenaline. I took a deep breath, clenched my fingers until my nails bit deep into my skin. My focus sharpened.

The squeal rose a bit more in volume, and then a sharp bang. "Yuy, we're in!"

And thank God, thank God but back-up arrived.

"Duo!" Heero immediately shouted, and he moved to get beside me.

And then Troit was moving toward me, and I could only stumble back. He ignored me, though, and threw a hand between Heero and me.

"I won't let you hurt him anymore."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. The bastard who had drugged me was telling Heero not to hurt me? What the fuck was that all about?

I bit my lip until it bled, forcing myself to stay aware. With a quick step, I wrenched forward and grabbed the man's gun away from him. He turned in reaction, grabbed me up and wrenched my wrist back. On a sharp cry, I dropped both the gun and my makeshift weapon and became a hostage in one quick movement.

His hand caught my throat, and I felt my own hands shake. Shit.

Not on my own fucking ship!

"Duo!"

"Maxwell!"

"The two of you must die," Troit said, his hand not quite clenching my throat too hard, but corded in a way to show he _could_ strangle me. "For not being able to protect my love."

* * *

For some reason, this was difficult to write, too. Go figure.

(1)Troit. Said with an "oi"sound, such as coy.


	12. Fade to Black

Disclaimer: Gundam Wing, shockingly, horrifyingly, belongs to someone else.

* * *

Sub Rosa

Chapter Twelve

Fade To Black

* * *

It pained me to admit it, even if it was only to myself, but his drug, whatever the fuck it was, was definitely starting to work.

"Maxwell, status," Wufei murmured. Heero looked too pissed and scared to speak.

"Bad," I managed. My eyes fell to the gun on the floor, but it was too far away. Both a good and bad thing. I couldn't get it, but neither could Troit.

"Hurry and sleep, love," Troit whispered, pressing his lips to my ear. I tugged my head away.

Things were getting fuzzy and difficult to make out. I clenched my fists again, but it didn't do much. So I only had one thing I could do, and that would be to get myself loose from this bastard's clutches before he decided to do something to someone.

"Let go of him," Heero finally managed. "If you loved him, you wouldn't hurt him like this."

"Oh? Like _you_ didn't hurt him, hiding the truth from him?"

Heero flinched violently.

"Hey, fucker!" I snapped, and I grabbed at his wrist. It was the same one I'd broken before, but I couldn't feel any break now. I had no idea exactly what that meant, but I _did_ know that I had to stop this conversation from even starting. "That's a little different from drugging and strangling me. Let me the fuck _go_!"

"I'll explain everything later, love," he promised. "After I kill them."

"No, dammit!" I reached around for his waist, prepared to toss him to the side, but he merely lifted my head up higher and pressed another syringe into my neck. I screamed at the pain of it.

"_Duo_!"

"Now, hold still, love," Troit said calmly. "You, too, traitors."

He hadn't released whatever injection sat inside, but I had no doubt that he would. Would it kill me? But I didn't think he would have something that lethal for me. But slicing it straight into my carotid artery... I'd be down like an elephant. And if it was anything more than I could handle, it truly would kill me, whether this man meant it to or not. (1)

What the hell could I do in this situation? I was the one being trumped, and by some psycho who thought he and I were supposed to be a couple. Like hell.

My one primary concern was the damn syringe in my throat. If I could just break it, snap it off or out, then Heero and Wufei could take care of the rest. I would just need to get the fuck away. Could I do that? I took quick inventory, even as Wufei and Heero were ordered to drop their weapons. Eyesight was down. So was reaction time. My body felt heavy.

So. I just wouldn't think about it.

I chopped up, moving as quickly as I could. Troit was faster, but I'd prepared for that and pulled back, putting the needle dangerously close to my carotid artery. He paused for that split second needed for my hand to smash into the syringe, thus breaking a second one. I grabbed this needle and ripped it out, blatantly ignoring the splurt of blood that squirted all over the room. I stabbed back.

Troit jumped away, and I took the chance to turn away from his hand and duck down.

And that would be when my knees buckled.

Heero was already moving forward, even as Wufei shot at Troit. I struggled to get my feet under me, but things were tilting in odd directions and my head started to seriously hurt. I clutched the needle fragment until the cut glass sank into my palm. The extra adrenaline would numb any extra drug that slipped into my bloodstream.

"Duo, are you all right?!"

It was a stupid question, one that showed more than anything just how distracted Heero was. "Yeah," I told him. "Not in too much danger. But I can't fight."

"Yuy," Wufei gritted out. Another gunshot sounded, then one more. I turned and grimaced. Troit had gotten his gun back. Fuck.

"Help him," I ordered, and stumbled up, keeping low. I managed to hit the side wall of my room and tried to become as small and unobtrusive as possible.

I watched Heero and Wufei begin their dance. Heero took the side closest to me, carefully standing in front of me. Guarding me. It wasn't a good strategy; Wufei ended up having to compensate for it more often than not, dodging Troit's swift attacks. The only thing keeping Troit off of Wufei was Heero, and he was quickly running out of bullets.

I needed to get out of the room. I had to either leave... or become useful.

But my focus was wavering once again, and my limbs were so heavy and numbed that I knew I wouldn't be going anywhere. I wouldn't be useful, and I certainly wouldn't be escaping. With a little jerk, I slid the glass into my upper arm, traced an invisible line for about an inch. The adrenaline kicked in again, but it didn't really help my eyesight. I bit my injured lip, then finally called, "status?"

"Fine," Heero answered immediately.

"Clear," Wufei gritted.

And now that I knew their positions, I aimed at the blob that hadn't answered my call and threw my needle with everything I had. A soft hiss told me I'd hit my mark.

"Good," Wufei sighed. "You hit his arm."

Had he blocked it? In any case, it had managed to slow down one of his arms. That was one less limb to fear. I scooted to the entrance just as my vision lost even the blobs. Everything was just colors now, nothing but blues and reds and black. It was a good thing I'd painted my room like outer space. At least I had a vague idea about where the people were. They were where the swirls of color were brightest.

I could feel my heart thudding in my ears, hear my breath harsh and ragged between my lips. My fingers and toes were completely numb. I didn't want to pass out again; how many damn times in the past year had I fucking passed out? But I had a feeling it was only a matter of time. I had to be out of the way by then. I had to make sure Heero could move freely.

I couldn't tell where the bullets were flying, so I could only hope that Heero and Wufei had everything under control. I heard Heero curse; a magazine hit the floor. Heero had to reload.

On a gasp, I sat still. My back was limp against the wall. I'd opted to close my eyes and work by memory and feel, hoping against hope that I wouldn't be debilitating myself even further. I could hardly feel my hands. My feet might as well have been chopped off for everything I felt from them.

Well, fuck.

A normal person most probably would have been out cold by now. At least my body was used to poison. Maybe my use of strychnine had a sort of application here? I almost chuckled, but saved my breath. Probably not.

It was time to move again, before I decided I didn't have the strength to do it anymore. Wufei was shooting up a storm from his end, and I followed the sound of his gunfire in order to be sure I was moving toward the door instead of away from it. I couldn't really remember where Heero was anymore.

"Duo, are you all right?" I heard a new gunshot from a new area, coming toward me. After only a millisecond, I relaxed again. Troit wouldn't be coming after me. It was Heero.

"Nn-nn," I answered, almost too tired to answer. My arms were trembling with the effort of moving me; I couldn't trust my legs to move correctly, and I couldn't risk tripping Heero. I think I managed to move about an inch.

"Wufei, get to Duo."

"On it."

"Don't touch him!" Troit shrieked suddenly, and then I heard a pounding, a crack. Something flew by me just before something banged against a wall of my ship.

"Wufei!"

_Shit!_

I forced my eyes to open, but it was like a heroin addict's sort of view – blurred, shapeless images. Images that danced, that didn't make any sense. A headache pounded thick and heavy in the back of my head. My attempt to stand did nothing but make me fall sideways to the floor. My head hit the ground and my eyes closed again. I couldn't find the strength to open them.

"Duo's down!" Wufei hissed.

"Shit! Duo, hang on back there!"

I couldn't really understand the sounds. They were all very familiar – a bang, a thud, pings and voices. It took forever for me to categorize them. A bang – gunshot. A thud – someone falling. The pings were definitely clippings, and I could only guess that the voices were Heero's, Wufei's, and Troit's.

Then my mind fuzzed until I couldn't understand anything, and my ears just didn't seem to work at all anymore.

I fought against it with everything I had, everything I could possibly muster up. Everything. I fucking clung to consciousness like a goddamn vice. I was still in the range of fire. Still in the room. I trusted my hand to reach forward when I couldn't feel it, trusted it to clutch at the ground and pull me forward.

"He's not moving, Heero!"

"Shit! _Shit! Duo!_"

* * *

I was almost afraid to wake up.

I was immediately aware of warmth surrounding me. Someone holding me. I kept my body as still as physically possible, kept my breathing even.

Who was I with? Heero... or Troit? If it was the latter, then I _had_ to escape. Were Heero and Wufei okay? Had they been hurt? What had happened after I had fallen to the drugs? Were they all right?

"I can hear your heartbeat accelerating."

My eyes didn't even open before I had grabbed around Heero's throat and grabbed onto him. "Heero – you're all-"

I stopped short at the hiss of pain.

Finally my eyes opened, just as I pulled back. There was blood all over Heero's shirt, on his jeans, on the floor. I covered my mouth and backed away. The smell was everywhere. I pulled my hand away and saw blood on my fingers.

"Heero – oh my God. What-"

"We're both all right." Heero gestured to my side; I turned my gaze and found Wufei leaning rather weakly against the wall. "Chest wound for me. Clavicle. Wufei took two, both to the same leg."

"Jesus," I murmured. My head was still spinning and light, warning me that the drug wasn't fully out of my system yet. "What happened?"

"He's still alive," Heero started. His own warning to me. "In the end, the room was too limited, and what with... complications, we decided to leave and regroup. He'll find a way in here eventually, but until then we rest."

At that, I looked around. We were in the cockpit, sitting on the floor of the ship. Heero and Wufei had grabbed the best possible place for us to hide out in, and must have specifically left to do so before they lost their chance. It had been a good choice, but we were in definite shit. I turned to hallway; it had been sealed. "You hacked into my ship's computer system."

"It was the only way," Heero said, like I was about to start a fight over the fact that he'd put the ship on lock-down with us in the cockpit and Mr. Psycho out there behind a half-foot of metal.

"I... need to get in emergency contact with the nearest radio station," I said, and struggled to get up.

"What?" Heero easily grabbed me and held me down, even with his wound. "You can do that?"

"Yeah. With a voice verification, they'll accept an emergency landing if I tell them the situation. Especially with Preventors on-board – you guys can get away with anything."

Wufei snorted from over in his little corner.

"Duo, the drug he gave you..."

"I dunno what it was, but it wasn't anything that would kill me. You saw him. He's crazy, but he's crazy _about me_. Which means he won't want to kill you. It's why he hasn't tried to shoot his way into this room."

"We know that." Heero turned away from me, glanced at the sealed lock. "Trust me when I say that we're both very well aware of that fact."

"Good," I grunted. I managed to pull myself up while he was distracted and dragged my sorry ass to the console. "Then I have to get in touch with the nearest colony."

"Can you?" Heero asked, coming up behind me.

"If one's in range," I answered. "If not... no."

"Let's hope one's in range," Wufei advised. I saw him shift his weight a bit and heard a pained hiss. I turned my head and watched him pull himself up onto his good leg. "I can't lie down forever. He's still back there."

"Thinking of a way to get in," Heero murmured.

I sent out a wave signal. "All right. How about you guys explain to me just what the hell it I you're talking about? What happened back there?"

"Maxwell, I believe I shall start by informing you that your room is a mess."

"Trashed," Heero confirmed, and I sighed. I'd expected it. "We'd been just barely holding him off when you collapsed. You were only about two-thirds of the way to the door, and even though you were sitting up against the wall..."

"We really couldn't take the chance that we'd lose you," Wufei finished. The wave picked up a faint signal to the left of the ship. I cut off the autopilot and turned the ship. "The man was fast, like mercury. He could dance away from our bullets, even with such a tiny space available to him. It was ridiculous. Yuy and I were both running low on ammo and time. We decided to make our break for it, grabbed you up and ran here."

"And that's when you got injured," I finished.

"Yes. He chased after us and managed to hit Wufei's leg. He must not have believed he hit it – Wufei didn't fall." Heero came up beside me and looked at the grid that was flowing up. "So he shot him again, aiming for the same spot."

"The artery?"

"Yes. He managed to dodge."

I took the chance to breathe a sigh of relief. "And you?"

"Wufei was the one who'd grabbed you, so he went over to the other side of the room while I held the man off. He managed to get this bullet in just before Wufei got through your security system. He screamed for you, Duo." Heero looked at me. "He screamed your name like you would wake up and go to him."

I shivered. "And I'll bet the freak believes I would have if I hadn't been unconscious."

"Maxwell, do you recognize him from somewhere?"

I shook my head, even as I sent out an emergency signal. "Hell, no. Never before in my life. Command? Command for Colony J8, come in, please. Colony J8, please come in. This is ship, code number X-09342-KG. Colony J8, do you read me?"

"This is Colony J8. We read you, X-09. Please state your name and security pass code."

"My name is Captain Duo Maxwell. My pass code is Shinigami 6336." (2)

"Thank you, Captain. Voice verification, please."

I sighed. Why couldn't they do the damn verification while I stated my fucking name and pass code? "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."

There was a short pause while they apparently scanned the voice traits. "I really don't know the man. I don't even know how he knows me. Maybe from back when we won the war? We were all mini-celebrities then. But afterwards, I was pretty low-profile."

"You never met him on a trip out-bound?" Wufei asked.

"No. I didn't meet him _once_. Not even when I worked with Hilde or the Sweepers."

"So how the _hell_ did he learn about you? He couldn't have been following you all this time; he would have gone after you sooner." Heero looked back at the locked hall again.

"That isn't summarily true," I said.

"Voice verification acquired, Captain. What is your message?"

"I have a stowaway on board. He has attacked both me and my two passengers, both of whom are Preventor agents. We have multiple shots fired on-board."

"All right, Captain. I will need the names and ID's of the agents on-board."

I sent Heero over to my spot and went to help Wufei do the same. Heero listed out his rank and number, then sent over his own voice verification while I listened. I hadn't even known that Preventor's voice verification was available, but I really should have. It sounded like something that crazy Une would do.

"What do you mean, it's not quite true?" Wufei asked. He didn't wince as I practically carried him forward, but the lack of assistance told me about his pain.

"I mean I only got into a relationship recently."

We arrived beside Heero, who had frozen up like a statue, and Wufei just said his name and code as quickly as he could.

"Voice verification, please."

Wufei just finished giving his own version of dogs and foxes when a horrific grinding noise started behind the air lock.

"Oh, fuck me," I murmured. Then I slammed the console and left Wufei to hold himself up. "Get Une!" I screamed. "Get Commander Une!"

I wouldn't be able to hear anything our little Verification Man said, so I just turned off the signal and glared at the door. There were emergency laser guns placed around the ship. It was a recommended precaution, just in case the air locks all fell down and blocked you from the cockpit. It was possible; it had happened before. I only had two, one in the galley and the other in my room.

I cursed very, very loudly.

"How long?" Heero demanded, turning to the lock, as well. He pulled out his gun.

"I don't know. The estimated time is five minutes."

"And how far away is the colony?"

"About twenty minutes," I told them.

I couldn't hear Wufei's response, but I could guess it.

* * *

(1)Or at least so say the laws of Kayura-verse. ^_^;

(2)666 is the number for the devil. 333 is the number for his son. Or so they say in witchcraft. I think. Thank CSI for that one.


	13. Die, Die My Darling

Disclaimer: Gundam Wing, shockingly, horrifyingly, belongs to someone else.

* * *

Sub Rosa

Chapter Thirteen

Die, Die My Darling

* * *

"We have a breach!" I shouted, pounding at the keypad to let me into the mini-storage facility that housed my weapons. I needed to hack into my own baby's mainframe to disable the locking mechanism on that space.

"Captain, can you please repeat your statement-"

"We have a breach!" I shouted, louder this time, trying to be heard over the screeching of the laser against metal. "A fucking breach, you hear me?! This guy's entering the cockpit!"

"Duo," Heero called.

"Hold on, dammit!" I hissed, almost mistyping a word in my haste. "Hold on. Almost, almost..." I almost squealed with glee when the hiss of the hatch opening told me I'd succeeded. "There! Grab whatever you can," I ordered, moving over to the storage to do just that. I grabbed three of the eight automatics and flung one of them on my shoulder. "Heero, Wufei!" I turned, but both of them were already moving toward me. I grabbed a combat machete and slipped out of their way. (1)

Heero came out with two more of the automatics and the last pistol while Wufei grabbed the three automatics left. "Nice stash here, Maxwell," he shouted, smirking and playing with his pistol. "Do I even need this now?"

"No," Heero answered smartly.

"Oh, shut up and be grateful," I yelled. I flipped them off.

And of course, that would be when Troit finally managed to break through the metal and bust down the last of the locked passageway.

"Stay back!" I ordered Heero and Wufei, taking a place in front of the two of them. I picked up both my pretty little Uzi's and blasted as much as I possibly could. Troit moved like fucking mercury, faster than I could imagine. I cursed resoundly.

He did a dive and roll and pounce from the ground over to my left and out of my immediate range. Troit completely ignored me, just like I thought he would, and went after Heero. It was like watching one of those old shows, one where someone would literally disappear for an instant and reappear somewhere closer to the screen. By the time I had turned around, Heero had already engaged the man.

Wufei was doing the same, his own Uzi's pulled up in each hand.

I wondered vaguely what dispatch thought of all this.

"Duo, duck!" Heero called, and I did so without thinking about it. Heero shot after the man as he ran around me to Wufei.

I slid my foot out and pulled out my machete. "Cease!" I shouted, and sliced up and out.

Troit bent backwards, but his chest split open before he managed to flip away. He flipped onto the wall and rebounded off it, aiming for Wufei. I cursed and flipped the machete back, bringing up my Uzi again.

It was chaos. My mind slowly stopped picking up everyone's movements and just started reacting. I got into my focused Shinigami position and watched as the world slowed. Wufei was over to my right, Heero behind me and slightly to my left. Troit was directly behind me.

The man was fast. Strong. And obsessed with me. It was all I knew, yet I'd already seen his methods and a few of his moves. Without my mind lagging long enough for my consciousness to keep up with it, I could react correctly without having to piece the knowledge together. I put one of the Uzi's on my back and pulled the machete out again.

Then the dance began.

Wufei and Heero were both shooting at Troit, more to keep him at a safe distance than for any other reason. I went low, consciously reminding myself that I needed this man alive if I was going to get some answers, and swung while Wufei and Heero kept the man busy.

Troit followed my movements, eyes flashing down, and suddenly he was sweeping a foot back – my machete sliced through his left leg, but he'd already switched his weight to his right and he just completed his spin, even as his blood spurted from the severed veins and his left leg from his calf down just dropped.

The man didn't even fucking flinch.

And then Troit slipped into the final part of his spin, something I hadn't predicted but should have – he knelt down behind me and wrapped his arms around me, one around my lower chest and one playing lightly against my throat.

"Baby," he murmured, his breath brushing against my ear, "how could you?" And while my battle-stuck mind attempted to figure out just what the hell kind of offensive maneuver this was, the man managed to flip out a switchblade and press it to my throat. I fucking groaned then in irritation. Back to square one.

But Wufei shot off another round, aiming for the man's head, and Troit had to swing us both around to avoid the bullet.

"Fucking hell," I heard Heero murmur.

"How could you?" Troit murmured again, and I was just fucking _done_.

"Because I want you _dead_," I hissed. I reached my head around and stared at him. The man was looking at me with shock written all over his nondescript features and I snarled right in his face. "I want you to disappear."

His face would have been priceless if not for the situation; he looked at me like one might the grim reaper. But his blood was pooling beside me and sinking deep into my pants and Wufei and Heero had their guns trained on the man – on me. I literally got to watch as the news finally sank in, as his features changed from disbelief to sorrow to outrage. I grabbed the man's hands and attempted to pull them away from me, but then he was moving, standing and forcing me to stand, as well, throwing me momentarily off-balance.

"You can't," he hissed, his teeth bared. He looked almost wild. "You can't." It became a mantra as he waved the arm that had been around my chest. The signs of insanity were finally starting to break through, and he was shooting the entire damn room. I reached up, managed to change the directory before he destroyed the main console. And while Heero and Wufei dodged, he pulled me out of the cockpit.

"Duo! Dammit!"

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" I snapped, hoping to get a reaction. If he would only react again, I'd be able to use that tiny fraction of a second and get my ass free. And then I'd be able to cut off his fucking arms, too.

It was strange how the man could pull me back with one leg nothing more than a bleeding stump, but fuck if he didn't pull it off. He was quick about it, too, pulling me into the guest room and locking the door. I tried to trip him up, but he just tossed me down, ripping the Uzi's harshly from my back. I rolled to dodge just as the clunk of the guns landing sounded in my ears. A ricochet shot embedded itself in the wall that led to the other bedroom.

"Love, how could you?"

My eyes shot up to his. He was hopping toward me. I pulled up my last Uzi and aimed it for his face. A grapple ensued as we both fought for control of the weapon. Troit ended up using my position lying on the bed to his advantage, leaning down and placing his chopped-off knee right on my groin. My grip pretty much died as I gasped and jerked in instinctive reaction. He took my damn machete while I grabbed at his knee to move it.

"There," the man gasped, his face slightly sweaty. "Now we can be together."

"Hell, no!" I shouted, and scooted back. The man's blood was all over me, staining the covers of the bed. I swore that if I got out of this _completely_ unscathed, I would pay top-dollar for replacements.

"Duo. My love." The man leaned completely on the bed, grabbed my upper arms. I reached my lower arms up, into the space between his, and pushed them away from my body. The bastard just grabbed the bed covers on each side with a reaction time swifter than wind and leaned his chest on mine. "I've waited so long. Patiently... believing that one day you would find me-"

"Don't bother," I snapped. "I'd chosen Heero a long time ago."

"Then choose me _now_," the man pressed. His hazel eyes pressed into mine. "I will save you. I _can_ save you. From now on, I will be here to protect you."

"I think you're missing an important point, buddy." I struggled to get my hands and legs out from underneath him so I could fucking _fight_. "You're a cripple now."

"That can be taken care of," he promised, his voice breathy, fast. Desperate? "I'm here now. Those fools who couldn't protect you-"

"What the hell are you talking about?!" I finally demanded, tired of hearing it. "What the hell didn't they manage to protect me from? I didn't know they even needed to!"

"I know you want to save yourself, love. Just listen. Listen to me." The man reached one hand underneath of him, laying it heavily on my chest. The other hand slid up and cupped my cheek. I snapped my head away, but he just followed after me, pushing my bangs off of my face. It felt like a lover's touch. A new fear started burning in my chest. "I took care of you. When they didn't even bother to care about you, I saved you. Because I love you. Do you understand? My brother tried to kill you, but I sent him to someone else. Someone different."

I had no idea what in five hells this man was talking about, and I wasn't in the mood to try to figure out what an insane man could possibly mean. "That's nice. Get the fuck off of me."

"Not until you understand," Troit persisted, that hand of his playing along my brow, then down along my jaw.

A pounding at the door sounded. It made me smile. Apparently no matter how many doors this bastard attempted to erect, Heero and Wufei would be willing to tear them down. My poor Demon's Wing was taking abuse.

"How the fuck could I possibly understand? You're crazy!"

"No. No, I'm not crazy. The doctors said my brain's neuron functions were phenomenal, but that they overworked the amygdala and some other minor parts of the mind," the man told me. He sounded excited. Like a child. "They told me that it was a small price to pay for the power I would receive."

"Well right now it's looking like a fortune," I muttered. But my mind whirled. Doctors? Power? If his neurons were firing at a rapid pace without producing stroke or organ failure, then he might actually be right – being crazy, to some, might not be as bad as death. "Get off of me. This has nothing to do with me."

"But you're wrong, don't you see? You're my destined one. You and I were raised by the same father."

"I had no father, you psycho!" I dug my feet into the bed and pushed for all I was worth. Of course he didn't budge. I arced my back, but only managed about an inch before Troit's strength pushed me back down.

"Shh, shh. That's where you're wrong. Don't you see? G was our father. He was our father."

I froze. The breath in my lungs whooshed out in shock. G? This man knew G?

"He taught me... so many things-"

"I _knew_ it!" The really _were_ the gods of pestilence. Even _dead_ they had to make my life difficult. "That son of a bitch!"

"You and I were both chosen," he said, leaning down on me so hard I had trouble catching my breath. "We were chosen by him. As soon as he chose you to go down in Deathscythe, I understood what he was telling me. I was supposed to protect you. So I did. I followed you everywhere you went, made sure you were okay. I was the one who leaked out your location in the holding cell to the press, the one where your little Heero came to get you. I was the one who saved Une after she had been shot, believing she could help you some day." Troit leaned down and pecked my cheek as I tried to digest it all. "I was always there, in the shadows. Protecting you."

"What – how did you – wait a fucking minute! Stop touching me!"

I wrenched my head away as he leaned down again and shoved as hard as I could. He hardly bucked.

I heard Heero's voice through the door and knew he and Wufei weren't going to be outside for long. Troit's fingers were playing up and down my face, touching my lips. But his efforts to hold me down were stopping him from going any further.

I needed more information.

"You say you've _always_ been there. Then what's that about your brother? Why was he after me? What happened?"

Troit's hand hesitated against my chin. And then he beamed at me and trailed those fingers down my neck. Shit. He must have taken my question for interest in _him_. "He was trained by a doctor, too. I don't know which. But he thought he should have been sent instead of who was chosen. He didn't understand the doctors' intentions. They needed someone who could stop the war. That man wasn't strong enough. I kept him away during the war, with help from the others."

Others? Shit. There were more?

"But after the war, the others thought that their work was done, and we all separated. And he went after all of you, taking the chance to hunt you all down. He'd heard how you'd left the others and wanted to hurt you. I protected you," the man said. He leaned down to kiss me again. All I could do was turn my head away. I didn't want his lips on mine.

"What do you mean?"

"I found someone. A guy. He looked okay, I suppose. Not as beautiful as you. But his face structure was similar." I winced as he repositioned himself; his arm was digging painfully into my chest. "I seduced him. Please don't be angry. I never had sex with him. I never did anything more than kiss him. Touch him a little. He let me buy him hair extensions when I told him I liked men with long hair. And all I had to do was tell him I loved the color purple to get him to put in contacts." He fingered my neck as if memorizing it. "Dracul thought he'd killed you, my love."

The door clanged open then, and Troit shuffled up and off of me-

"Shoot to kill," I said. It was difficult to raise my voice enough to be heard.

Both shot before I even finished saying the words.

Troit jumped back, but Heero seemed ready for such a reaction and fired without waiting to see in which direction Troit would go. I struggled back, scooting away while keeping myself low, and I couldn't help but look at Heero's eyes. They weren't the eyes of the Perfect Soldier. They were far too furious for that.

Troit fumbled for a split second, wobbled precariously on his one leg. It was more than enough time for Heero's bullet to sink deep into his flesh.

I watched rather disinterestedly as Troit fell, blood spraying all over the damn room. He fell ontot he bed, then slipped off and fell with a bang to the floor.

"Duo!"

"Maxwell, are you all right?"

Their footsteps raced in tandem over to me, and when they stopped they both knelt carefully beside me.

"Is he dead?" I asked.

Wufei was the one to turn away from me and check, and only when he confirmed that Troit was dead did I try to get up from the bed. Heero reached out and put his arm around me, helping me balance.

It should have been... flashier. More important. This Troit man's death should have hit me the same way his words had. In a way that made it impossible to ever forget. But his death had looked just like the death of so many others. Those who had come before him.

I turned to Heero just as he was about to echo Wufei's question. "We have to find someone. We have to..." I grabbed my head. "I have to find a man named Dracul. I have to know..."

"Dracul?" Heero repeated. I didn't understand his tone. He sounded... pissed. "Where did you hear that name, Duo?"

"He said it. He said he used a civilian to trick a man named Dracul. He said... he said a lot of things." I took a deep breath, then another. "A man named Dracul. And did you know those doctor bastards had made a few predecessors before being content with us? I _knew_ those bastards were the gods of pestilence, I fucking _knew_ it."

"Duo, slow down. I don't know about much of what you're saying. We can figure all of that out later. But you can at least rest assured about Dracul."

I cocked my head, my head whirring too fast for me to be anything more than slightly interested. "I can rest assured?"

"Yes, that's right." Wufei returned to my side and placed a hand on my shoulder. "You said that he tricked the man? It makes sense."

Heero sat us both back down on the bed, heedless of the blood. Apparently my lack of enthusiasm was concerning. He rubbed my back in circles. "We've heard the name Dracul before. He was the one I told you about, Duo."

My brain whirred. "Which one?"

"The one who said he'd killed you."

* * *

Obviously this twist in the storyline – the one where our dear friend with the weird-ass name did things during the war – is fake. I'm playing with it.

Also: Huge thanks to those who have waited so patiently for this story. My computer crashed; the battery is completely shot, but until I manage to get things worked out, I'm going to have to keep getting it to work on said dead battery. So if I disappear again, it's because of that.

(1)Thank my brother for this one, too.


	14. Turn The Page

Disclaimer: Gundam Wing, shockingly, horrifyingly, belongs to someone else.

* * *

Sub Rosa

Chapter Fourteen

Turn The Page

* * *

The warning alarm made all of us jump.

I stood up rather shakily, but refused Heero's offer to land on the colony for me. I was the only one without injuries. I wouldn't hurt myself messing with the console while docking.

We all dragged ourselves back to the cockpit, passing through two emergency lock doors that had been cut through. I touched the hull and murmured a quiet little apology to my Wing. Then we all sat in our chairs and buckled up, with Heero taking his now-usual shotgun seat and Wufei lying quietly behind me. I flashed through the information on the screen and it was a good thing I was so damn used to flying because I never consciously studied those graphs and charts. All I noticed was that despite the damage, my Wing was doing fine, and didn't that look like I needed to scoot to the left?

Heero accommodatingly turned on my battle music.

"So," I asked, finally breaking the silence as I positioned Wing into the holding bay's anchoring system. "What do we say about the artillery?"

"We don't," Wufei piped up from the back. "We'll let them assume what they want. If they want to hold us accountable for using weapons that saved out lives, they can kiss our asses. Commander Une will back that up."

I nodded. The click of the anchors sounded on either side, and the light on my console flashed green. I had the computer start scanning the area for bodies and leaned back. "Thanks for getting to me, you guys," I finally murmured to them. I slanted Heero a glance. It was interesting to see Heero's surprised face. Totally worth it.

"Maxwell, are you attempting to give us one of your rare warm fuzzies when I am in too much pain to properly appreciate it?" Wufei demanded from the back.

I chuckled tiredly. "Yes."

Mr. Troit the Psycho Stalker had given me quite a bit of information. About his reasons for stalking me. About who he was and what he'd done.

Had he been telling me the truth? I couldn't imagine that he'd been lying – he'd believed every single word that had fallen from his lips. If I sifted through the insane parts and paid attention to only the snippets of received information, maybe it was true. About G. About how he saved Une. About why he believed he and I were meant to be. About... about this Dracul man.

Troit had said that Dracul had been 'raised' by one of the other doctors. That was two. That meant there were three unaccounted for. But who? What did they want? Troit had said that they'd all worked behind the scenes during the war to keep the five who'd been chosen safe. What about after the war? Where did they all go? Were they going to become dangers, too?

"Well?" Wufei asked expectantly, pulling me back to the present.

"Stop rushing it." I let the scanner work, let Wing get placed into position in the bay. Let everything take care of itself for once. "Thank you, guys."

"Duo, did something happen? I mean, something more than-"

"Heero, that could very well be taken as an insult."

Heero hesitated. "_Did_ something happen?"

I rolled my head over to look at him. "I am insulted. No. Nothing else happened."

Although, that wasn't quite true. Before the psychotic amount of shit that played out, I'd had a major epiphany about myself. Something about my emotions – more to the point, my depression – and how it had originated solely from me and couldn't be blamed on anyone else. Yeah. Something like that.

I smiled. If nothing else, I'd found out something very important about myself. And now I was a bit stronger for it. If only emotionally. "Once this place is scanned and found clear, we'll dock off and get Une to come get us. I don't know about either of you, but I just don't feel like flying this ship. Sorry, baby," I said as an afterthought, patting my Wing. "It's not your fault, I swear."

"Well, I certainly don't want to fly anything," Wufei said.

"I agree." Heero lightly touched his collarbone. I took a closer look at it and winced. At some point, the bastard had forced it back into place. Or close enough. "Besides, the two of us are injured and you were drugged with an unknown narcotic. We don't want you doing anything until you've been properly tested."

I rolled my eyes. "Aye aye."

"For once, you listen to your first mate." Heero unbuckled himself and went to Wufei. "How are you doing?" he asked his partner, and I tuned in for highlight words. Then I let my brain drift.

I would have to repaint a large portion of my ship _again_. What a pain in the ass. The man's leg had been abandoned on the floor, and due mostly to sheer laziness the thing had been left loose to slide around at its whimsy. It had left some interesting blood pools.

Then there was the blood in my bedroom, along with the blood in the guest room and of course, let's not forget the cockpit and its interesting blood pools. And I was pretty certain that Troit had been kind enough to lead a bloody trail down the corridor, as well. The bastard had ruined all our hard work.

And then there was the damage to the doors. Both of the bedrooms' doors were completely destroyed. Decimated. Then there were the emergency locks, of which two had been carved up quite crudely.

All of the repairs would put my ass in the red. Especially since I was pretty damn sure that I wouldn't be getting paid for any of this. Hell. I would have to get straight back to work. And that would mean leaving Heero, which I highly doubted would go over smoothly. I was entering a third dimension of hell.

The screen bleeped out a message, and I snapped forward in response.

"Duo?" Heero asked. His eyes turned to scan the screen as I did. "Shit."

"We have guests," I said grimly.

"How many?" Wufei demanded. He sat up, as well. Heero quickly helped him unbuckle, even as I did the same. My eyes ran through the analyses of the individuals. "Two. Wait – they're showing us something. They don't look hostile." I pulled up a visual. Two men were standing in front of the port entrance, both looking more like petty thugs with high-class equipment than anything else. I breathed a sigh of relief. "Looks like patrol to me."

"Captain Maxwell, please confirm."

"Hey there, man! Dude, glad to hear your voice." It was the same guy I'd spoken to earlier. "Hey, did we give you heart attacks? I sincerely apologize. This is Captain Maxwell of the vessel X-09342-KG. Code is Shinigami 6336. We need medical assistance as soon as possible. And a body bag."

"A body bag, sir?" The boy sounded more than a little distraught. "Sir, I need a voice verification."

"Ah. Sure. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." Wufei was standing on his good leg now, balancing on it and checking an Uzi he'd apparently decided he would land with. "The body bag is for the man who'd attacked us while on-board."

"A-Ah. Very well, then, sir. We have two escorts prepared to take you over to our emergency hospital. It's a short trip."

I looked at Heero's collarbone and winced again. "Better make it fast. We're coming out to meet your escorts. Tell them to have their weapons down and ID's at the ready. We're not exactly willing to take any more risks."

"Aye aye, sir."

I turned off the transmission and watched as the guards lowered their guns and raised their ID's. I read them off the screen before ushering Heero to the door. Instead he watched over me as I wrapped one of Wufei's arms around my neck and supported his efforts to get to the door.

Wufei grunted in pain just past the first ruined emergency lock. "Thank you, Maxwell," he managed.

"Shut up" was my amicable reply.

* * *

We were all taken to a waiting car and promised that the cops would be immediately contacted. When I asked if Une had been called, I was assured that she had not only been told but was already on her way.

Heero and Wufei were both taken to surgery to repair their broken bones while I whisked away in order for the doctors to poke and prod at me for several hours. I was informed that there was a point to it all, but I started seriously doubting that after four needles had already successfully drained me of my precious blood. Which I preferred _inside_ my body, thank you.

I raised my hands on command, breathed as told, and generally tried to not get pissed off. I was still working off all the adrenaline, after all, and a lapse into Shinigami probably wouldn't be appreciated.

Then there was more waiting, this time alone, my legs kicking back and forth against the edge of the bed while I picked at the suck-ass hospital gown and looked vaguely around. The bed didn't have railings; at least I wasn't an invalid this time.

I raked a hand through the tangled mess of my hair, momentarily grateful that I hadn't let the nurses unbraid it all. Then, paranoia far too strong to ignore any longer, I glanced surreptitiously out the window.

I may not have been injured – but Heero and Wufei certainly had been.

My glance turned to the door. Were they okay? No news was usually good news; it meant the doctors were still working. Which meant Wufei may very well be able to walk again.

And it meant Heero was still alive.

I ran a hand over my face and shook my head violently. No. Just because Heero was in the hospital and was out of my immediate line of sight didn't mean he was on death row. He'd been fine on-board the ship. Perfectly fine.

Logically I knew that. My heart was the thing telling me _what if_. And my heart needed to learn when to shut up.

I needed to get my shit together. I didn't want my strongest memory of Heero to be that damn moment. What I _did_ want was a future with Heero. A good one. I needed to make sure I did everything I possibly could for that future.

Which meant I needed to shape up.

* * *

I was cleared of any lingering side-effects of my little drug excursion and received my clothes back as compensation. They really weren't worth it; they were so bloody and ripped it served absolutely no purpose whatsoever.

Thinking back on it, the end of the battle seemed a bit too anticlimactic after the whole debacle with Caribol. Shouldn't there have been a few more explosions? Maybe a laser battle, or an electric shock that lit up the entire ship.

Maybe I was paranoid, but it made me feel that this whole damn thing wasn't over. How could it be? There were three unknown people a helluva lot stronger than us doing who-knows-what. Zechs was messing around with things that we were unaware of, and just to top things off, my life was a little topsy-turvy. I was in the red, my ship needed repairs, Heero was injured and thus once again stuck in office detail – after, of course, he heals a bit – and my relationship with the guys was precarious.

Yeah. Life was getting really, really hard.

"Okay. One step at a time." I was back at the house, my old clothes in the trash and new clothes getting soaked by my wet hair. I was in the middle of braiding it as I thought. What could I do right now?

There was nothing to do about the threats to anyone's physical health at this moment, and there was nothing to be done about Zechs since I wasn't part of the Preventors.

I hissed out a breath as an idea popped straight into my brain. I had several problems, each of them centered around my own decisions the past three – almost four – years. Everything was my problem. So everything was my problem to deal with.

But this... this solution could solve quite a number of those problems. If I could make myself do it. Give up the only part of that past that I fell in love with.

I could do that. If it was for the things I'd fallen in love with after that.

I pressed the heels of my palms into my eye sockets until colors sparked. It wasn't like I hadn't sacrificed things before. And it wasn't as if I'd felt loss before.

More, I needed to do what I could.

Both my feet and hands were steady when I stood. Before I returned to Heero and Wufei, there were a few calls I needed to make.

* * *

"Maxwell, for the last time, I can fully manage to walk on my own. I have been given crutches."

"Are you positive? Because I'm going to have my hands full here." I pointed to indicate Heero, who had his arms crossed rather petulantly against his chest.

"Maxwell, do I need to remind you how many times _you_ were the one who needed assistance out of here?"

I cleared my throat. "Uh, no. Not really." Heero was smirking, dammit. I took the chance to lightly smack him on top of his head. "Har de har."

"It is rather hilarious," Wufei said, and he was smirking, too. Feeling rather happy despite everything, I flipped him off.

"Okay, both of you just shut up. I have to deal with taking your sorry asses back to my poor baby, and since I'm the only one in perfect health, I suggest you be a little more careful."

"Duo, I could still kick your ass."

I glared down at Heero. "Just try it, cripple."

"Hey. I am offended."

"Tough," I grinned, then turned at the familiar sound of heels clacking long and confident against the tile. I wheeled Heero around before the person arrived, knowing he wouldn't want her at his back. Wufei placed his crutches to the side and stood more firmly on his good foot.

Une's entrance was met with each of us completely prepared.

She went straight over to me, ignoring, for now, her wounded first-class Preventors. "What the hell happened, Maxwell? You told me you were secure!"

"I know." I waited for it; I'd known the woman would absolutely explode as soon as she found out, but it would only be inevitable and it was better to face the devil head on.

"You placed my officers in direct danger due purely by lack of proper precautionary measures! If you hadn't blatantly underestimated your enemy's abilities, you may not be where you are right now!"

"That's a lot of big words," I noted. She got so pissed I truly thought she'd pull her gun out on me.

"Duo Maxwell, goddamn you, I had just finished warning you of the dangers-"

"Commander," Heero tried.

"No. Not this time, Agent Yuy. Keep your mouth shut. It's a damn good thing that you're not one of my subordinates, or I'd have you on some serious probationary work."

I bit my cheek to keep myself from smiling. Good thing she didn't know what I was planning. "I can only apologize for everything again, Commander," I told her, trying the serious gig for a change. "I know very well just what my recklessness could have caused. But you should know as well as me that what had actually happened was beyond our ability to foresee."

"Oh? And what would these 'actual happenings' have been?" she pressed. The woman was shorter than me by a fair few inches, but she had me wanting to back up a few steps. Had this woman really needed to be saved by Troit?

"My stalker was my predecessor," I told her, and turned to Heero and Wufei. They had interesting faces – that surprised look again. I grinned outright. "I told you guys that the good ol' doctors were kind enough to have used others as guinea pigs before using us as the final products, but you said we should wait to speak about it."

"You did? They did?" Une took a step back and groaned as if she'd been sucker punched. A hand rose to pinch the bridge of her nose rather harshly. "Let me get this straight. You predecessor was _also_ a Gundam pilot?"

"No." I watched as Wufei leaned against the wall of the hospital room and nodded. It was a good idea – the time it might take to explain everything could put a serious strain on his leg. "Not as far as I know, at least. He said we were the ones chosen to pilot the Gundams."

Une took on look outside the room and promptly shut the door. "So you mean to tell me that, what? They were rejected by the scientists?"

"In a word."

She held up a hand. "And he just... told you this?"

"He was all too willing when I asked," I answered. "The man truly was obsessed with me. He said that he'd been following me since I entered the war."

Wufei whistled, a deep, low sound that cut through Heero's... snarl? "That long," the Chinese man murmured. His eyes studied the floor for a moment. "If you had one, we can assume each of us did."

"He did mention others," I said. "And that Dracul guy. Troit – that's the stalker's name, Une – Troit said that he and Dracul were brothers. I don't think he meant blood brothers, though, because he said _I_ was his brother, too."

"Slow down, Strike," Une said, and the use of my code name told me I was in the clear – for now. "Tell us what this Troit man said from start from finish, please."

So I told her everything he said practically verbatim. It was interesting; halfway through I stopped watching her more mundane absorption reactions and watched Heero. His face was much more expressive. Or maybe I was just used to reading it? In any case, his face roiled between worried tp pissed to panicked – when I recounted how he touched me – to assessing to – and here I got my own warm fuzzy – to practically homicidal when I recounted the part about the others.

"So you're telling me that this Troit saved my life?" Une demanded, completely floored by that little piece of information.

"That bastard set up a decoy," Wufei growled, still stuck on that particular tidbit.

"It's hard to say this," Heero murmured, his eyes still stoked by his earlier fury, "but... I don't know that I have it in me to be properly outraged about that."

Wufei's eyes cut into Heero's temple. "What are you saying, Yuy?" he hissed.

"If he hadn't," Heero said, his eyes flicking to me, "we don't know what would have happened. I'm not saying what he did was acceptable. I'm only saying that... there is one piece of the outcome he created that I... appreciate."

I stared at him. Heero? Black and white Heero? Had I just hallucinated that?

"Yuy, please. Spare me." Une rolled her temples and huffed a tight breath. "Maxwell, I am sorely tempted to label you a bio hazard."

"Why thank you," I responded dryly.

"I really don't think it was a compliment, Maxwell," Wufei piped up. But he was smiling.

"Hey," I piped up. "This is as good a time as any. I was wondering about something, Une."

Her eyes rolled over to mine, glaring out of the side of their sockets. "What is it now, Strike?"

I crossed my arms and cocked a Shinigami smile her way. "So... have you got any open spots in Preventors I could take? I happen to be looking for a job."

Her jaw just plain fucking dropped.

* * *

Yay, new chapter! I don't know why, but these chapters have gotten difficult to write...


	15. Through The Never

Disclaimer: Gundam Wing, shockingly, horrifyingly, belongs to someone else.

* * *

Sub Rosa

Chapter Fifteen

Through The Never

* * *

It was fairly priceless, really, if I took a step back and looked at it all objectively. Heero and Wufei both looked absolutely stunned, almost like I'd tasered them. And Une, bless her psycho soul, looked about ready to run for safety.

At the same time, I felt the need to stuff my hands in my front pockets and rock back a bit, a safe way of putting a little distance between us all without actually stepping away.

Every last one of them looked scared in some way. I tried to catalog it, really I did, but I didn't understand what I thought I saw. Une was what I thought to be both terrified and bereaved. Wufei looked like he'd swallowed a watermelon whole, while Heero had adopted a more... horror-stricken look.

Did any of those make any damn sense? No. No they did not.

And just when I was about to break the silence, desperate to make the faces at least change in countenance, pounding footsteps broke each of us from our musings and made us turn. Une whipped out her police-issue pistol while I crouched to the side of the door.

But the ones to burst through the door and into Wufei's hospital room were none other than Trowa and Quatre, both of them breathing hard. I cocked an eyebrow at them both and stood up straight once more. Une cursed lowly as she put away her gun.

"Duo!"

And a giant piece of blond fluff was suddenly glomping me around the waist. "Quatre, what're you guys doing here?" A hand automatically lifted to pat the guy on the head; he burrowed his face in my shirt as if to glue himself to me. I raised my head to silently send my query to Trowa.

The taller of the two was taking in the damage to Heero and Wufei. I didn't have to look over to see Heero's reaction to Trowa's scrutiny; I could easily feel the glare of death shooting laser beams over to Trowa. Heero wasn't being subtle in warning Trowa to leave me alone. I rolled my eyes. What was the overprotective idiot gonna do? Drop-kick him? I snorted at the thought.

"You seem to have needed our help," Trowa remarked dryly.

"You would have just gotten in our way, Barton," Wufei sniffed, but he seemed rather pleased about something.

"That might have been a good thing, by the looks of it." Trowa came over to me and barely touched Quatre's back. "Quatre? Are you all right?"

Quatre nodded against me, but his grip didn't loosen.

It was like being strangled by a teddy bear. "Come on, Qat. I'm fine. Completely unharmed. I was the lucky one this time."

"Duo. How many times is this going to happen?"

I took a deep breath. "Yeah, I'm rather tired of it, too. That's why I'm sacking in my Wing."

Quatre pulled back, his eyes rather wide for someone who'd never done more than perhaps looked at the thing. "What?"

"I'm going to sell Wing." I sent an apologetic look to Heero and Wufei. "Even though we put so much work into her, it's just not a good idea to keep her when I wouldn't be using her anymore."

"Wouldn't use her anymore?" Quatre echoed, seeming rather dazed. "But Duo, you love that ship. And you work on her."

"Actually, I'm hoping Une will let my recent stupidity slide and sign me aboard her crew."

"It is not a 'crew,' Duo Maxwell," she huffed, but her gaze was more assessing than anything else. "You want to be an agent?"

I shook my head. "The last thing I need to do is go out on cases and invite more danger. No, that would be even stupider of me than this fiasco. It would be better for me to stay near HQ as much as possible. Having Preventors surrounding my name will make all but the strongest or craziest try to attack me, so I won't be as much of a walking target anymore. I'll have an income, which is a definite plus at this point, and I won't have to worry the hell out of a certain somebody by returning alone to space."

I could swear every single eye in the room turned to Heero.

"All in all," I finished, "There's no bad side to this."

Quatre didn't look convinced.

"So, in order for this brilliant plan of yours to work, I have to pretend I didn't just lose the availability of my two finest agents due to your negligence?"

"Commander-"

"Yeah, that pretty much sums it up." I glared at Heero for him to shut up. He glared right back. I could tell he would be about as cooperative a patient as I had been.

Quatre still had his arms around me, almost as if he was afraid to let go. I held him lightly around the waist, too, but my eyes skittered over to Trowa. I was surprised that the man hadn't already ripped me away from Quatre, but he was hardly paying attention to me at that instant. Instead his attention was on Une. "And will you?"

I couldn't read his tone, and it made me a little skittish. Did Trowa even _want_ Une to ignore my blatant disregard of safety procedure? Just because he and I had come to some sort of halfway-understanding with one another didn't mean he was suddenly my friend again. I looked down at Quatre, but his attention was on Une, as well. Maybe I should have kept this private, if only for the poor woman's sake.

But obviously I had forgotten exactly which woman was in the room with us.

"I haven't made the decision yet. Obviously I'll be going through your files, Strike. And I'll need you to go through the same tests everyone else had to go through."

I rolled my eyes. "Even though we can both guess exactly how easily I'm going to pass them all?"

She gave me a rather tight-lipped, fairly insidious smile. "I'll be sure to make it a bit more difficult for you."

I stuck my tongue out at her. "That wouldn't give you a fair reading, now would it, Commander?"

"That would be the point, Strike."

"Oh, ow. Am I not allowed to be S-Class?"

"Don't get ahead of yourself." She cast us all looks. "I'll give you all a chance to catch up with one another. I have a ship ready to take you all back to Earth tomorrow morning at oh-seven-hundred hours. Don't be late."

"Aye aye," I murmured, but the woman was already striding purposefully out of the room, those heels of hers pounding in rhythm against the tiles once more. "You know, I don't care what anyone says, that woman is bloody scary."

"Then why do you antagonize her?" Wufei demanded, not for the first time.

"Because it's funny," I retorted, my usual response.

He just sighed.

"Duo." Quatre caught my immediate attention; his eyes were probing. "Are you really all right?"

"Sure," I answered, and smiled for him. "I got out clean."

"For once," Wufei piped up.

"Shut up, 'Fei," I chirped back. "But what are you guys doing here?" My eyes automatically popped over to Trowa again, who had decided to lean against the wall opposite Wufei. "I thought you guys had been placed somewhere safe until all of this blew over."

"Did you really think I would just lay back and twiddle my thumbs while all of you risked your lives?"

"No. But I was kind of hoping-"

"Duo!"

I rolled my eyes. "Fine, fine. But you have Trowa to shackle you to the damn safehouse. How'd you brainwash him into this?"

"_Duo!"_

I ruffled the guy's hair and laughed. "Yes?" I asked innocently.

His eyes were uncertain for a second, but hesitantly he smiled and raised his eyebrows up at me. "I talked him into it."

I gasped theatrically and put a hand to my heart. "You scoundrel! You know better than to use such a weapon!"

Quatre rolled his eyes. "It is not a brainwashing drug."

"You can only say that because you have immunity," I argued lightly. "So what did you tell him?"

"Oh, no." He unwrapped an arm from around me to stick his finger in my face. "You're going to tell me what happened. How did that man get to you? What happened? Did he hurt you? What happened to Heero and Wufei? Is he-"

I clapped my hands over my ears. "No more! I give, I give!"

So the next several minutes were wasted repeating what I'd just said earlier, cut short momentarily when a nurse came in to wonder exactly why we were still in the room. Wufei just flipped her his badge and said 'business' and the woman left us alone again. It was better than a magic wand.

"So you're telling me I have a... another person trained by H out there?" Quatre asked, the hand that had pointed at me now covering his mouth. "How is that possible?"

I shrugged. "Dunno. But Troit did mention that he'd been worked on, so I can assume that they were trying to force bodies past their potential."

"When that didn't work, they searched for people who could be trained to match the level of ability necessary," Trowa murmured. "It makes sense."

"In a twisted way," Wufei agreed, still obviously not happy about it.

"Well, they were certainly twisted enough," I muttered.

"So what should we do?" Quatre asked. "They haven't caused us any trouble, and there's no way for us to track them down, anyway."

"But should we really wait for them to hunt us down again?" Wufei demanded. He straightened up and looked carefully at all of us, lingering on me. "I don't like the idea of waiting for danger to once again come to us. If we explain what's been done by the other two, hopefully they would cooperate with us."

"But Quatre has a point," Heero pointed out. "We have no idea what they look like, let alone where they could be."

"We _do_ have a universe to search," I agreed.

"So are we supposed to wait?" he repeated.

"For now, we have no other option," Trowa said lowly. "And we have several other problems to deal with before we concern ourselves with anything else."

I nodded. "Like getting my ass a job."

The reminder made Quatre frown, but it was Heero who spoke up. "duo, are you sure this is what you want to do?"

"Yeah." I smiled for him, careful to not let it get too bright. I'd made my decision, dammit. Why were they trying to back me out of it? Was it concern? Or was it something else? My grin slipped a little at that. "Do you not want me to join Preventors?"

"That's not it."

I pushed off from that, immeasurably relieved, and changed the subject. "So what're we gonna do about Zechs?"

Wufei didn't look particularly pleased with this change in subject, if his full-face grimace was a clue. "Maxwell, I don't want to even think about having to fight Zechs again."

"Will it really come to that?" Quatre asked, then, "and what are we talking about, anyway? Duo just said that we shouldn't trust Milliardo. Why?"

I turned to him. "Apparently he had information on the leader of Caribol, and a piece of the information was on Preventor files. He knew about the leader," I clarified before Quatre could ask. "I don't know that he's necessarily bad, since for one reason or another, the information was made available to Preventors. We just didn't know it was there, and none of us thought to check for something we didn't believe existed. His intentions may have been perfectly acceptable."

"But still," Heero hissed, his eyes narrowed, "he should have informed you. And if he'd become involved in the conflict in some way, he should have-"

"But how did he?" Trowa interrupted, cutting to the heart of the matter. "_How_ had he gotten information on Caribol? And information that important? Did it have anything to do with his mission?"

"I don't know. We don't know what Zechs' job was." Heero seemed absolutely furious to be trapped in his wheelchair. His eyes caught mine, and I literally got to watch the frustration transform itself into careful consideration. I blinked at him.

"Well, we need to find out. I wonder if he's returned to Preventors since then?" Quatre was going into Take Charge Mode.

"If he had, Une would've trussed him up and kept him there for us," I answered.

Quatre shook his head. "for now, let's just get you guys out of here. Duo, do you want to take your Wing back yourself?"

I considered it for all of two seconds. But if I returned to her, I'd never be able to hold on to my resolve. "No. It wouldn't be a good idea."

Quatre seemed to understand exactly what I meant, when I'd been hoping everyone would assume I was talking about going alone. "Then I'll call for a mover to pick it up. You'll be coming back with us."

I flashed a quick look at Trowa, who thankfully was looking at Wufei and sharing a silent communication with him, but I didn't brook any arguments. Heero and Wufei would be safest with them.

"So are you ever going to tell us what happened?" Trowa asked idly, and everyone started heading out the door. I went over to Heero after Wufei passed and steered him out, as well. Wufei began an account of out little adventure, his movements graceful even with crutches.

"Duo."

I looked down at Heero, but the man was studiously looking in front of him, almost as if he actually had something worth looking at. Understanding his mood if not the reasons why, I looked up and forward, as well. "Yeah."

He was silent for a bit longer, and we almost made it out the front door before he finally said, "I understand now. How you've felt. Injured, I mean."

It's sad to admit, but it took me a while to understand just what the hell he was talking about. "Oh. You mean my whole crazy 'gotta do it myself' thing. Yeah. I need to apologize for that, and for all the trouble I've caused you and the others. And I'm pretty sure you've been having to worry over my mental state, too, and I'm sorry for that."

"Duo?"

His voice had completely changed now. We were out the door, and the guys had given us some space, presumably noticing our 'secret conversation' looks and providing privacy as we made our way to the driveway. I looked down to see Heero wisted around to look at me. "Heero, what the hell are you doing?!" But his eyes continued assessing mine. "Turn your ass back around or the conversation stops now."

He did as told.

"Hey! Lovebirds!"

I looked over to Trowa, stunned to speechlessness to hear the joke come from his lips. "You're both going with Quatre. Wufei will be coming with me."

"You got two cars?" Heero asked, and it was a miracle he remembered how to work his vocal cords, because right then I couldn't.

"We anticipated problems," Trowa responded dryly.

"Ha ha, Barton," Wufei huffed. Trowa popped open the door to a sleek black BMW, while Quatre pointed us over to a much more sedate silver-blue sedan.

"Duo? You were saying?"

I cast a quick look to Trowa, then followed behind Quatre to the car in a different section of the lot. "I had... some things to think about, before and after Troit attacked." I knew my smile just then was really self-deprecating, but I couldn't hide it in time, and Quatre caught it on my face when he turned to me.

"Duo," Quatre looked almost sick with sadness, "do you want to be alone?"

I hesitated. "In a minute." I wheeled Heero up until Quatre was within reach, and then I held out my hand. "I made you worry. I ran off on my own for three years, leaving you in the lurch, and then when I came back I brought so much trouble. And I'm not even talking about all the enemies that chased me down. And then I tried to kill myself!" Quatre's eyes seemed even more assessing than Heero's, as if he could reach in and read my soul. "I'm sorry. I'll straighten up from here on out."

Quatre seemed to find something in my eyes, and his smile when he did was cautiously hopeful. "Duo, are you really all right?"

"I'm working on it."

Quatre grabbed my hand with both of his. "I'm glad, Duo. I'm really glad for you."

Heero seemed to have taken just about enough. "What the hell are you two talking about?"

I outright laughed, more for relief than anything else. "Heero, I'm going through an overhaul stage. But hold on; let's get you into the car."

It was interesting work, sticking him into his seat in the back and then folding up his wheelchair and huffing it into the trunk. Heero scowled sullenly the entire time. I couldn't help but empathize; I'd been in a similarly sucky position a few times in the past year. But then Trowa pulled up next to us and Quatre winked at me before going over and speaking with him, and I took the chance to get myself inside the car beside Heero.

"So?" he huffed.

I ruffled his hair, laughing at the pouty look on his face. "Sorry," I managed, "I know how you feel, but I think I understand how _you_ felt... I've never felt quite _this_ protective of you before."

Heero harrumphed through his nose and turned away, but I could swear he was blushing.

I let him off the hook. "You know, what I was talking about earlier..." I leaned back and gently faced him forward again, careful of his collarbone. Heero hissed out a sigh. "I couldn't believe just how... how selfish I'd been."

"Duo," Heero started, but I bared my teeth at him.

"Shut up and let me finish. By selfish I mean... dumb? Annoying? I don't know that there's a perfect adjective for it. I'd been trying so hard to find myself and whatever that I'd given up everything else I'd been able to find. Friends, even memories. I'd been distorting them all simply because I'd missed the obvious fact that I'd been killing _people_. I'd started thinking, 'I hadn't noticed that I was making orphans, so what else have I missed?' And then things just started getting questioned, and then... I guess I ran off with it a bit too far."

"You... hadn't known...?" Heero asked, his voice careful but still blatantly skeptical.

"It hadn't hit me," I said bluntly. "I kept telling myself that I would fight so everything I went through would never happen to another kid. But obviously..." I let my voice drift off and shrugged. "And then I got obsessed with knowing who I was. But really, does it matter?" I was unbuckled – unlike Heero – so I was able to pull my knees up to my chest. "I'd been so worried about who I was that I forgot that humans change."

"Duo," Heero breathed, his eyes a little wide.

"So that's basically what I'm trying to say." I turned to him and blasted him face-first with a mega-watt grin. "From now on, I'm gonna try to not be such a burden. From today on, I'm gonna change. Will you still love me even after I'm different?"

Heero's shocked look fell into an easy grin. "Always, Duo. No matter what, I will always love you, as long as you're you."

It shocked me into laughter, and shortly after Quatre came over and took over the driver's seat.

* * *

I hadn't quite been expecting this, but this is a perfect place to end this series. In the next, I'm gonna do my best to start answering a few of these conflicts and a few more questions. It's sad, but I feel this story beginning, in a far-off, still vaguely distant sense, to end. Please stick with me to the end! Thank you, everyone!

Next: The Nickelback Saga. It's either the last one or the next-to-last one, most likely. But, of course, if enough people show their support, I'll be more than happy to continue it... okay, that was a shameless plug. I apologize. '_';


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